In progress: Collaborative pay-offs By Sonali Pahwa Moataz Nasr , Alexandria-born artist, switched to art as a second career and first attracted attention at the Youth Salon of 1995. He has exhibited frequently in Egypt as well as Europe, and created art for Diwan bookstore and La Bodega lounge. He was the winner of the Ministry of Culture prize at the 2002 Dakar Biennale. I will soon leave for Senegal, where I'm showing my work at the Dakar Biennale again. Two years ago I attended for the first time and it was a door that opened up a lot of opportunities. I found out about it by accident. I applied after the formal deadline, but the organisers did not mind since they were eager to have an Egyptian artist. They had previously attempted to invite Egyptians through the government and met with little enthusiasm. The authorities considered an African event beneath them. But the Dakar Biennale is strong, certainly stronger than its Cairo equivalent. They select just 40 artists and give them the support they need to show their work properly. When I came back from Senegal I gave a talk to Cairo artists and encouraged them to go too. This year there are six of us attending and the Egyptian representation is the largest of any single country at Dakar. The world is a new place now and the artist must open up his agenda. There are many things happening around the world about which we cannot know unless we communicate better. And it is easier to do this collectively rather than individually. I hope the group going to Dakar will make a statement about the presence of Egyptian contemporary art and come back with better connections in the art world. The work I presented in Dakar last year, Ear of Clay, Ear of Dough, took as its starting point a story about Goha in which he ignores his wife's complaints by stopping up one ear with clay and the other with dough. It is natural for me to use the shaabi heritage--I'm Egyptian and absorb what is around me. The culture is so rich here, there is so much that you can work with. No, it isn't difficult to translate this when I exhibit abroad. After all, I'm not supposed to explain the work to people. Sometimes I add a bit of text just to show how the work was conceived. It should be possible for everyone to feel it. My last work, Tabla, was understood very well and it is going all over the world. The contemporary art museum of Komamuto in Japan bought one edition of this work, and I will show it at the Museum of Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf and the Sao Paolo Biennale too. My current paintings are on the theme of my body. This is a continuation of an early interest in blank spaces, such as walls that carry impressions of events which have brushed up against them. Now I'm working on the self as a blank page. I began as a painter and love to paint -- it is something I can do easily in my studio. I do installations when I have a big concept and want people to be inside it and involved in it. They have a strong impact, and working in three dimensions is a joy. But I can't do them all the time. Installations take a lot of money and I usually have to sponsor myself. My first aim is to present my work in Egypt. The idea is to connect different aspects of our lives so that people can see better, and think, and maybe try to change the way things are. One of the reasons I keep living in Egypt is the belief I have something to do here. It doesn't matter where I show my work, I just need a space. I would like to show outside Cairo but so far I've only exhibited as far as Alexandria. It is hard to get the money to show elsewhere. What I'm trying to do instead, together with a friend, is to reach out and encourage different people to appreciate art. We are approaching small groups, but would like to make it a wider effort and especially to work with schools throughout Egypt. Art can make a big difference. I would love to have other artists join me. Though this is hard, as we do not usually work together, collaboration would be the best thing for us and those around us. The fact remains, however, that an artist cannot survive by showing in Egypt alone--unless one does what the market demands, which has little to do with art. I knew from the beginning that my work was not saleable and that I would have to support myself somehow. Not by painting flowers in order to sell, but by making public art and working in interior decoration. This was a hard course of action, but I think it is taking me in the right direction. After a long time there are results, and now people invite me to events and pay me to show my work. When I participated in the Venice Biennale last year it was the realisation of an old dream. In the years I had been dreaming the only way to get to Venice was through the government because it has a pavilion at the biennale. But last year three Egyptians were invited for the first time to show on the off-biennale fringe that has become more important than the main event. It was exciting to be invited, and yet I was a little disappointed when I realised that the art market is big and we do not yet understand its mechanics. We are at the very beginning in developing an infrastructure of art management in Egypt. I will be travelling a lot during the summer, including to southern Italy for a residency sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Culture. Then in October I will have a new show at the Townhouse. The theme of the installation will be the story told by postage stamps of Egyptian history -- things that were promised, ideas of who we were and what we would do. I have been collecting stamps since I was a child. The installation will incorporate a video as well. This will be based on the story I was told about my uncle's death by his son, who is a doctor. He was strong and in good health. But after difficult surgery his body refused to accept food. The body started to eat itself from within. Eventually the doctors said the matter was all in his mind and he would have to decide whether he wanted to live or die. The man gave up and he died.
