Epigraphy is the title of a new exhibition at Gallery Misr by artist Mahmoud Hamed. The mixed media paintings conclude an adventure not only into history and time, but also in techniques. On the gallery walls the huge paintings, most of a meter on one side, look like huge inscriptions moved straight from a cave. The artist used a mixture of painting, sculpture and collage to get his point across. “The idea behind my works,” he says, “is to drag time onto the surface of the painting, the better to explore it...” A professor at the Faculty of Art Education, Helwan University, Hamed was born in 1963. He earned his PhD in crafts and folk heritage, and has since then participated in many local and international exhibitions. Here as elsewhere the paintings reflect the artist's fascination with the folk arts. “One of my folk art sources is magic symbols,” he explains: the eye, the square, the star, strange human figures. “The paintings reflect the history of magic from the dawn of history to the very years of tadween, as writing is referred to in Islamic history.” In another work, the Faiyum funerary portraits make their presence known. “I used them to further question time, and to explore the effect of merging different historical symbols on one surface.” That must be why they are layered with Arabic calligraphy — to disorienting effect. “What the words say,” Hamed points out, “does not mean much to me. It's the form of the letters that I'm interested in as symbols.” They work, too. “It was in 1997 that I first started working on this theme. I gave my first exhibition at the Arts Compound. I've continued with the same theme, with variations, since then. This time I was keen on producing paintings with no borderlines, with the edges eroded, to make them look like inscriptions, like those ancient wooden doors that have symbols carved into them...” Using a standard palette — blue for the sea, brown and yellow for sand and golden for ancient Egyptian temples — Hamed employs the “magic colours” suited to his purpose. “The history of folk art in Egypt is very rich. It does date all the way back to the ancient Egyptians, and in all subsequent ages, it remained the closest to the hearts of Egyptians, and ran parallel to official culture.” Hence these timeless experiments. No one knows for sure when it began, and it certainly will not end here. The exhibition runs until the end of February.
