After nine years of hewing obstinate Aswan granite the city's International Sculpture Symposium has revived large-scale stone sculpture, reports Nevine El-Aref Since its inception in 1996 by the Cultural Development Fund, the aim of the Aswan International Sculpture Symposium (AISS) has been to establish a new generation of granite sculptors in Egypt -- a genre that had all but disappeared following the death of Mahmoud Mokhtar. Now, after nine annual meetings, the AISS has become more ambitious, envisioning new goals. The symposium's success in re-establishing the practice of stone sculpture in Egypt and contributing to its development worldwide has meant the revival of opportunities for sculptors to produce large works in granite, instilling in young Egyptian artists the drive to regenerate Aswan as the international arts centre it once was. This year, the AISS attracted 12 Egyptian and foreign sculptors, two amateurs and a large number of tourists who come to watch sculptors taming granite, transforming it into works of art. Every year, from 15 January to 15 March, at the top of a hill opposite the Nubia Museum, Aswan sculptors and their assistants, dressed in gowns and iron masks, come face-to-face with blocks of granite. Standing, bending or sitting astride large pieces of rock they diligently drill, hammer, cut, polish, or add final touches to their works of art. For one complete month they see nothing but rock, channelling their energies, emotions and desires into the pounding process. Over the years that intensity has turned intractable stone into the likeness of Nubian homes, hippos emerging from the Nile, Pharaonic cats, an Ancient Egyptian royal shrine, an African gate, a flying carpet. "They are like Bohemian pieces standing in the parched desert," said Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni as he strolled the grounds this year. "I am very proud of these works. When you have a vision, nothing should stand in your way," Hosni continued. "Establishing the AISS was a dream, conceived when I was Egypt's cultural attaché in Paris. Now, after more than two decades, it has finally come true and the AISS not only exists on Egypt's cultural calendar but has established itself as an important international event attracting leading sculptors and amateurs from different countries. "Aswan stone," Hosni explains, "which had once been used in building the Pyramids, huge temples, obelisks, colossi and tombs, is now helping develop the skill and perseverance of not only professional sculptors but their assistants as well, and the local assistants in Aswan are now considered among the best in the world." Over nine years the AISS has attracted many foreign sculptors. Among them is the Japanese artist Haruko Yamashita, who took part in the symposium's seventh and eighth rounds. This year she came at her own expense to carve a work of art to be installed in El-Gouna resort on the Red Sea coast. "Since my first participation in 2001, the environment of Aswan has always enthused me. Its kind sun and gentle breeze cocooned me, stirred my feelings, blew up what lies inside my soul and forced me to tame the huge stone," Yamashita said. When commissioned for the El-Gouna project -- a project she describes as "enormous" -- Yamashita immediately picked Aswan as the locale in which she wished to work. Not only was it a matter of the rock -- the granite in Aswan is justly famous -- but because Aswan "houses the history of Ancient Egyptians" who "constructed all these splendid monuments". Nearby a woman works meticulously on the surface of the rock. Claude Audbert, a professor of literature and Arabic language in France, is deciding what should be done with her piece of stone. This year she joined the symposium team to experience the feeling of being a granite sculptor, sampling the emotions and passion that are critical in transforming hard rock into fine art. "I never practiced granite sculpture and the AISS has offered me a means to do so," Audbert said, explaining that her artistic journey had been a process of exploration. "When I first started hewing the stone I wished to carve a bird but then I completely changed the idea. A lion is the only animal that might reflect the obstinacy of the stone." Audbert's assistant, Ahmed, has been a guide in the process: "Working with such a skilled assistant, for me, is a continuous apprenticing in the highly developed sculpture technique necessary to deal with the granite." Indeed, the availability of skilled assistants is one of the event's most attractive features. "In their hands the granite might as well be a piece of silk," said Adam Henein, commissar of the symposium. But their path, too, has been one of exploration -- one directed, groomed and refined over the nine years of the event. Prior to the symposia they were quarry workers. The symposia have afforded them a door to a more enriching and substantial professional future. "I was only 14 when I joined the symposium's first round," says Mahmoud El-Douehi, the youngest assistant participating this year. "I worked with a large number of Egyptian and foreign sculptors who taught me how to work with patience, to understand and read a small drawn model in order transform it into a concrete statue of granite." El-Douehi's roots are deep in the granite culture: his grandfather is Amm Ali El-Douehi, the now-elderly headman who worked in the dismantling and transportation of the Abu Simbel temple during the salvage operation carried out by UNESCO and other countries to rescue Nubian temples before they were drowned in the waters of Lake Nasser. His father and cousins have also followed suit. For the young El-Douehi, however, the event has raised him to new levels of skill and finesse. While often working to commission, following the plans and ideas of the artists he works with, working with the symposium has encouraged him to develop his own style in stonemasonry. Salah Shaqwir, head of the Cultural Development Fund, which sponsors the event, believes the AISS has touched an atavistic chord within Egyptian society. And the young artists who have groomed their talents over nine years of symposium activity are now taking to the streets. This year "The African Gate", sculpted by Italian artist Mauro Stacciol, has been chosen by Aswan governorate to be installed at the entrance of the Aswan-Abu Simbel road. Sculptures from previous symposia are displayed at the Qait Bey citadel in Alexandria. Aswan, and the artists it gathers, has been central to the revival of the ancient art of sculpture, which for millenia lay at the core of Egypt's heritage.
