Moina Fauchier Delavigne explores a project that seeks to integrate the contemporary artistic spirit into the festivity of Ramadan lights The Goethe Institute basement is dimly, peculiarly lit. Entering, you begin to perceive shadows dancing on a rectangular screen on the far wall. Surprising in its simplicity, this game of shadows in motion disorients the viewer's sense of perception. According to Swiss artists Gertrud Genhart and Ralph Hauswirth, in the outside world, too many perceptions crowd the mind. In the enclosed space they've created, on the other hand, using filters to control the intensity and shape of the light, "you can focus on yourself". Genhart explains that, "where there is light, there is shadow", adding, "We created a neutral situation to let the light itself paint our screen, the way it paints a sensitised surface during the photographic process." Along with 20 other artists, Genhart and Hauswirth have installed their work in and around the Mashrabeya Gallery as well -- a relatively high-tech, personal contribution to the presiding craziness of downtown lighting in Ramadan; each artist uses light as the principal, if not the only medium. Hoda Lotfi, another, Egyptian participant, hopes that the exhibit will help Cairenes develop awareness of lighting in their city. The way lights are deployed in everyday Cairo life, she feels, is very inspiring for artists, whether it is the beauty of Nile boats, flickering shop windows or especially decorated mosques... Menawwareen, organised by the Mashrabeya Gallery director Stephania Angarano, is the name of this exhibit, which features artists from Italy, Spain and Switzerland as well as Egypt. Cairo is a capital city in which Ramadan is deeply felt. With the help of Lisa Lounis, in the NOUBAR (Nomad Urban Breaking Art) project of which Menawwareen is part, Angarano sought to capitalise on the local tradition of "luminous objects" associated with that feeling, showing the full artistic power of light. The show is characterised by light installations and light sculptures to demonstrate that "it is possible to create an art work with light." For several participating artists -- Marwa Talaat and Ayman El- Semary, for example -- the use of light as an aesthetic medium was not an altogether new concept. A year back in Turin, Italy, Angarano had been inspired by an exhibit called "Contemporary Turin: light and art", featuring work by world-renowned artists all around the city. "My whole desire to organize this project grew out of this event," she explains. "The whole city centre was stage to art works and installations that I found really striking. On one street, people could look up and read a luminous text, telling them a fairy tale. You could literally enter the story walking up the street! It was magical." Such a process was in accordance with NOUBAR, which seeks to take contemporary art out of the confines of the gallery space, bringing it to a wider urban environment. Also in accordance with the principles of NOUBAR, Angarano explains, Menawwareen seeks to transform the spaces of daily life according to the sensibility of the public, through the filter of artistic work, fostering a collective creative experience of the city. "The project is open to suggestions, the door is open," she insists. The relation between the art and its environment is meant to create a new harmony, as well as intimating an "emotional" link with the scenery of everyday life. The aim is "to turn the city into scenery and make viewers sensitive to the culture of light". The resulting installations, collages and mixed-media pieces make for a visually exciting experience. Menawwareen has a precedent in the famous American artist James Turrell. To Genhart, for example, he remains an idol, the light artist whose pieces try "to create an atmosphere... like the wordless thoughts that come out of looking into a fire". According to this man, she says, "we are still a primitive culture in terms of light. We are just beginning." And it is projects like Menawwareen, she implies, that will help us develop to a better, more mature understanding of this medium. Yet Menawwareen is not all about the orchestration of public space as such. Spanish artist Xavier Puigmarti participated with delicate luminous drawings and paintings inside the Mashrabeya Gallery. Lightness prevails: "I needed something light-blooded, as you say here," he explains. "I decided to connect electric lights with my iconography; I often paint animals, like this electric donkey who didn't like its big ears and ended up with a cactus on top of his head -- like a deer, or the bugs that circle the light at night." Each image is painted from the inside, with the shapes appearing thanks only to light, the colours and dots combining to create an impression. Puigmarti also imagined four lamps that go on and off intermittently every few seconds, transforming each white column into a painting. Every three seconds, you become impatient for the drawings to reappear. The light is soft, the work simple, executed with effortless economy of means. These meticulous images are indeed almost naive, with light dots from needle holes conveying a sense of peace. Likewise Lofti's five big duff drums are lighted from the inside, using a string and white bulbs, "the way the people light things in Cairo during Ramadan". Lofti printed black camels on the surface of the drums, reproducing an elegant motif. "They are symbol of patience and peacefulness, that's why I relate them with the ritual of fasting, which is for me a spiritual practice before all..." In the Goethe Institue, the running lights give a magic, abstract energy to the space. But in the room on the right, Mohamed El-Ganoubi, coming from Upper Egypt, offers a more socially oriented piece, more concrete, more semantically laden: an impressive line of masculine faces staring at the viewer. The moulds, executed in a handful of colours, all have the same shape. Some are made from wax and lit from the inside, so that they gradually melt through the duration of the exhibit. The overall result is strangely powerful. "I express the power of society on the individuals in our country," El-Ganoubi says, quickly elaborating, "Here, the individual comes after the group and any attempt to go outside is perceived as a transgression, even despite the fact that we need social mobility. But the faces look just the same," he says, the way any one person reflects the society in which he lives, "even in the very process of attempting to be different." Elsewhere the concreteness focused directly on Ramadan. Again at Goethe, three Egyptians in their early thirties -- Ahmed Abdel-Karim, Islam Mohamed and Mohamed Fekry -- provide a complex meditation on the notion of breaking the fast: various glass objects and dishes seem to float on top of a black table, representing the five pillars of Islam. In the Mashrabeya Gallery, next to Marwa Talaat's truncated feminine figures, which show us the Egyptian girl "flying in a world of colour but without enough freedom", Nasha'at Ahmed built a revolutionary famous (Ramadan lantern). Together with photographic works and sculptures, the rich variety of works on offer conspire to place the viewer in a realm of pure experience. Lasting till the end of Ramadan, it seems like the kind of thing that could be turned into an annual event, coming and going with the appearance of the famous on Cairo street corners.
