A talented photographer and artist, Hamdi Reda has chosen to make use of all the materials at hand for the art he creates at Artellewa. Born and raised in one of Cairo's most densely populated districts, Ard Al-Lewa, Reda uses the distinctive character and people of the district in his artistic work. A photographer who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1997, Reda first worked as an assistant researcher at the faculty after graduating. “But I was not interested in working in academia,” he says. In 2007, Reda started his journey in search of an answer to the biggest question of his life: should he leave Egypt or should he stay and look for a way to make his art known and relevant? “I did not want to be just another photographer. I wanted to make art part of every Egyptian's daily life and to establish a platform for exchanging ideas about art. This is what I am about,” he says. Some people might look at a district like Ard Al-Lewa as somewhere that does not leave much room for dreams, but Reda thought differently. He recalls that “I looked around me and told myself that this was the most suitable place to find inspiration – the people and the buildings were what interested me.” Reda decided to stay in Egypt and turned his family's one-car garage into an arts centre called Artellewa. Reda explains that he wanted the centre to be a source of inspiration for other artists and for those who love art and are interested in fostering exchanges between Egyptian and foreign artists, children and adults and Egyptians and each other, he says. Another goal of Artellewa is to change the perspective some people have of areas like Ard Al-Lewa and to promote the idea that art does not speak through money or material things and that it is more about the spirit. “I wanted Egyptians from higher social classes to learn that they may have things in common with people living in areas like Ard Al-Lewa,” he says. Artellewa has been a success for the past seven years, and it now has other spaces besides its original garage. It's still a place where artists can gather and talk, with a focus on art for children. The centre offers programmes such as Saffarni, (Help me Travel) for example, the idea of a French artist. Children are asked to choose where they wish to travel and the centre is then turned into a venue for the country they choose. The children meet people from that country, listen to its music, play its games and eat its food. “The programme works as a way of exposing children to different backgrounds and arousing their curiosity and interest in the unknown,” Reda says. However, the journey has not always been an easy one, and “it took a lot of time for people in Ard Al-Lewa to understand and accept the idea,” Reda adds. Some people, even those who Reda grew up with, still do not know what Artellewa is. “They had the idea that it was all about business, and no matter how much I explained they still saw it that way,” he says. Others see the place as being simply for tourists and only really interesting for visitors. However, interest grew in the centre after the revolution, and today it is seen as playing a role in raising the educational level of the neighbourhood and building a stronger relationship between art, society and the streets. The writer is a freelance journalist.
