Gamal Nkrumah gets to grips with Katherine Bakhoum's Orientalist phantasms For posterity's sake picture Port Said -- the historic Suez Canal Authority building to be precise -- in luminous silver hues. Overcast grey clouds with a silver lining fade into the shimmering silvery white waters. Faint edifices and arches flank sky and sea. The bleary building embodies the architectural parallel for how the port city's past tandem the present. The muted foggy pastels confer on the city a certain dreamy timelessness. Sketched in as a giant alien intrusion, it still somehow belongs to the landscape engulfing it. There is something intimidating, too, about the sheltering skies in pastel achromatic tones -- a kind of eerie menace, a hint of hidden fury. The waters of the Mediterranean are pale and washed out. The moon is in full multihued swing, and the viewers' thoughts turn to two directions: past and present. Badr, the classical Arabic for full Moon,is the eternal symbol of sensual beauty. The full moon is at once both sublime and unbecoming. The luminescent terrestrial globes are peopled with climbers. It is as if they surmount some orb- like pyramid. "My moons are very prominent," Katherine Bakhoum tells Al-Ahram Weekly. Unabashedly Orientalist, her works delicately depict the dress codes, mannerisms and customs characteristic of the Orient -- that is to say North Africa, including pockets of predominantly Muslim Sahelian West Africa, Sudan and especially Egypt. But don't expect Bain dans le Harem by Jean-Léon Gerome or Eugène Declacroix's The Women of Algiers. Nothing is featured that is haram (forbidden). Expect a certain relaxed lassitude and visual spectacle galore. Her paintings are contemporary impressions of the past. Her Turqueries hint of the exuberant sensuality and a highly-coloured vision of the surreal, exotic Orient. Bakhoum's full moons are thoroughly magical and they glow like celestial spheres. My pulse quickens as I behold their beauty. Her moons are enveloped in light. Yet there is the uninterrupted threat that the power of her orbs could suddenly dim. That delirium of irony she christens Rêves d'Orient, roughly translated as "Reflecting on the Orient", is emblematic of her French free-wheeling cultural approach. Playing with illusions of perspicacity and penetration, she jests with the position of her full moons at the pinnacle of her paintings. Moons are metaphors of Bakhoum's mood of controlled anarchy. I defy even a certified lunatic not to be charmed and mesmerised by Bakhoum's full moons. However, it is her larger than life men and women that truly capture the imagination. It is as if she has an insatiable curiosity about the figures she creates. You descry the lunacy in the eye. She makes metaphysicians of both her models and onlookers as they daydream and ponder time passing. So what are acceptable subjects to broach? Man in Red, 130x94cm, pastel and mixed media on paper is a highly stylised portrayal of a Senegalese griot in a green tarboush. Adolescent in Green, 75x60cm, pastel and mixed media on paper is presumably Egyptian. Both men, the middle-aged African and the youthful Arab are in soft flowing gowns, headgear and a passive, acquiescent, somewhat absent-minded aspect. Man with Mirror, 200x100cm, also pastel and mixed media on paper is equally compelling with a curiously cocooning robe, his paunch protruding provocatively as he stares at himself in the mirror. , 67x51cm, and again pastel and mixed media on paper is beautiful. He is an unpretentious peasant with aristocratic provenance. His garment, cerulean and his turban a pretty pearl, are exquisitely detailed. Few paintings juxtapose so adroitly bright blue and ashen lead. Her painting Tea, 130x130cm, pastel and mixed media on paper, displays three girls reclining in reverie. Some of Bakhoum's women sport ornate accessories, but most are clad in edgily contemporary dresses with statement subdued colours. The traditional Orientalist view of the North African man crops up frequently in these paintings of Bakhoum. It is as if her creations are stuck in a slight time warp in terms of style. "The past was more elegant even though I have nothing against the present," she explains rather defensively. Appurtenances that have long been discarded in a modern setting are highlighted in crimson and carnelian. "Red is very strong as a colour. I reserve red for the tarboush, the shoes or slippers and perhaps a belt." Long-abandoned bodily adornments draw much attention to a bygone age. Backgrounds are cluttered with souvenirs that stand for emblems of the past. Abstract symbols representing reams of books, crystal paperweights and pencil shavings or paperclips are depicted in shiny pigments and reduced to snippets of hieroglyphs and kaleidoscopic trinkets. I suspect the artist is living in the past. Maybe that's it. She reminisces about an epoch long lost. It is as if she is trying desperately to analogise by hyperbole. Expectancy is palpable in these intensely passionate portraits. You can see it in the intently studied gaze of her creations. "The characters I paint are always anticipating something to happen. Maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't. They do not know. I, too, do not know. I am not entirely sure," she shrugs. "In the past my passion was landscapes. Now I am into people of the past." It is a turnaround so complete that it is hard to miss. What has gone missing in the weird and wonderful world of Bakhoum's paintings is the emphasis on landscape. Today she focuses on the people in her dreams and their spectral surroundings. Her determination to go the distance with portraits lends her paintings a certain intimacy hitherto unforeseen. Katherine Bakhoum's Rêves d'Orient exhibition at Safar Khan Gallery 6 Brazil Street, Zamalek, Cairo, runs though 30 November. Tel: 2735 3314 e-mail: [email protected]
