Amira El-Naqeeb enters the labyrinth of fashion and art in search of a common identity Location: the vicinity of Fustat, Old Cairo. The air drips with the spicy aroma of traditional crafts and their materials infused with a whiff of history. It is a Saturday night, and the area is buzzing like a beehive. The arcades in the Darb 1718 contemporary arts centre are black-draped to create changing rooms. Technicians are adjusting the sound and light. Models flit anxiously in and out, and a crowd is beginning to assemble. It reminded me of the fashion shows at the Piazza Di Espana in Rome. Yet this show was the outcome of the Recycled Fashion Design workshop financed by the Spanish embassy in Cairo and held at Darb 1718 in April and May. It seems that Ana Maria Seco, the Spanish artist and designer who presented the workshop, had no idea her classes would lead to this. "There is so much garbage and trash in Cairo, and I thought why not use these disposable materials to create a work of art," Seco said. It took a long time to select the materials, which was mostly done through Facebook and by word of mouth. Seco, who volunteered for the job, had to choose 16 out of 100 applicants. "I wanted people who had already worked in fashion or students who were going to be teaching fashion design," she said. The show was about to begin. The music started up, and the lights in the Darb 1718's outdoor arena dimmed. The show featured collections by eight of the students, who had studied the works of famous Spanish artists during the workshop and used them as inspiration. At first I had mixed feelings: I was both appalled and appreciative. Most of the clothes were not for everyday use, yet the creative heights reached in the use of plastic bottles, rubbish bags, nails, coins, bandages and film negatives was awe-inspiring. The amount of effort in the creations clearly impressed the audience. Equally impressive were the choice of music and the short documentaries that accompanied each collection to show how each one came into existence. One collection was Picasso-inspired, created by the young designer Hiram Essay who used small cube-box shapes to adorn the trims of tee- shirts and transformed empty photo frames into necklaces. Another was themed around Spanish artist Antonio Gaudi. White and pink flowers dominated this collection, adding a touch of romanticism. The flowers -- from recycled paper -- and the soft lines drifted like a breath of fresh air among the bin bags and sharp nails. Goya was a complete surprise. When the Bosnian dancer Laila Bajramovic with feather-light steps accompanied the Goya-inspired collection to a slow tango, she proved to be the final brush stroke to a perfect painting. The sensuality of the dance added to the glamour of Noha Hesham's collection, which was dominated by black in the form of rubbish bags. "The reality is that the students taught me more than I taught them, but isn't this always the case?" asked an ecstatic Seco at the end of the show. It was a smooth transition from fashion show to art exhibition. "Uncovered", which continues until 29 June, encompasses several genres: photography, video art, painting and collage. A platform for collaboration between artists from Spain and Egypt, "Uncovered" is about the idea of fashion and its impact on human identity. Vincent Lopez's The Fallen Idol, acrylic on canvas, shows the head of the Sphinx plastered with the stamps of Prada, Gucci and Dolci and Gabbana and embodies loss of authenticity and tradition in a world dominated by mass consumerism. Lopez, who is from the Canary Islands and has lived in many parts of Europe, agrees that The Fallen Idol has a direct message and is not exclusively conceptual. All cultures and civilisations are built on idols, he tells me, and now globalisation and mass consumption have been substituted for everything in our world that has any value. "My style is Pop Art; I always use a common element that you can find everywhere and take out of context," Lopez said. His other painting, Babel, is a digital picture of the skyscrapers that tower over major cities. I failed to see the link to the theme of the exhibition. "Babel is more complicated," Lopez explained. "It's about globalisation, the industrial world and what the major corporations are doing to our world. I believe that in order to create fashion for the 21st century you have to understand what the world and people are like in this century." Lopez looks at life through global causes; he seems to have no personal subjects. Moving through the exhibition is like delving deep into the core of the detailed, intricate, yet refined layers of the human soul. Mohamed Khalifa's Illusion addresses the subject of fashion from a different, rather morbid perspective: The black background dominates the photographs, playing with the only subject: a life-size mannequin of a female body. "Perfect, yet fake," says Khalifa, whose creative process in this case ran backwards. He had the idea when he was doing a shoot with the mannequin for a client. "I started dressing her up, taking shots of the model from different angles. Every time the angle changed, the impression and the impact changed. "The picture of the mannequin will always be alluring with the makeup, the clothes and the promise of flawlessness, but when you look closer she is lifeless, and soulless." Fashion, Khalifa says, can be a necessity, a joy, or an illusion. "I chose the illusion." Glitz and glamour hint at a dangerous area. A mannequin has a slim, nicely-shaped figure and glossy red lipstick, but eyes as cold as steel. In some images she wears black tulle over her head, which adds more mystery. The play with shadow and light forces the viewer to journey deep into the dark tunnel within us. Khalifa addresses the issue of how society dictates fashion. "What if everyone dressed according to his or her own taste, whether or not it was fashionable? If you enjoy it, then it's yours. That's how I see it," he says. The second floor of Darb 1718 housed works by various artists. My attention was caught by the intellectually engaging collages of the Spanish artist and photographer Roma. The collages captured the everyday life of Cairenes, with all their diversity. It was a documentation of expressions, sentiments, and situations. Roma managed to intertwine fashion with life through portraying clothes on balcony clothes lines, window displays stuffed with garments, young women wearing bright scarves and older women in black, playing with the contrast between clothes and people. Roma said that as she walked through the streets of Downtown Cairo for the first time she was bombarded with impressions. "The collage is moments of Egypt, and I tried to capture them all," she says. Another of her collages depicts fatherhood: it is of men carrying their offspring from babies to children. This was new to Roma; in Spain it is not common to see men carrying their children, and she was touched. "I have seen this so many times while I have been in Cairo, men wrapping their arms round their children in a protective way. I love it," she says. The third piece is a horizontal image of a woman wearing a niqab (head scarf), while the man beside her has a piece of cloth over his eyes. Roma is expressing the discrimination between men and women in Egyptian society and the control that results from male domination. "I used the fabric on the man's eyes as a symbol of the blind control practiced upon women in this society," she says. The young Egyptian artist Hossam Hodhod had a compelling conceptual video in the exhibition. It shows a man whose face is covered by a clay mask, which other hands are trying to mold into shape by hitting and pulling it with modeling tools. The video was projected as 12 different scenes, at the same pace but in different sequence. Although there was no actual violence in the video it still evoked violence in the form of the hands of the people trying to reshape the clay on the figure's head. Hodhod says that from his point of view society has no specific identity. What prompted this idea were the contradictions he sees, especially in the shanty towns of Cairo. "When I see a veiled girl wearing very tight clothes, for me this is very confusing," he says. "It doesn't conform to our traditions and doesn't embody the essence of the veil, which is modesty." It led Hodhod to study the way young people behaved and thought. "Young Egyptians watch music videos and foreign movies and blindly imitate the actors and actresses, disregarding whether or not this or that fashion suits them," he says. At the other extreme are those who only watch religious channels and blindly follow religious edicts and views. There is no balance. "In short, this is how our identity is being manipulated," Hodhod says. If we see ourselves through what we wear, this month's events at Darb at 1718 provide food for thought.
