Sonali Pahwa speaks with Shady El-Noshokaty, who has turned to human organs in his recent work Dull organs sunk in formaldehyde vats are resurrected in a glowing afterlife in Shady El-Noshokaty's drawings and paintings currently showing at the Townhouse. The artist's early training was as a figurative painter but in this series a focus on the aesthetics of the human figure gives way to a fascination with the more grotesque forms of organs. The idea that the body contains no end of shapes feeds El-Noshokaty's ruminations on matter in eternal transformation as well as his search for new material for his art. "Natural studies are a style of art that I like," he begins, "but there is a metaphor in each of my studies. The idea of death is central to them and is placed alongside its supposed opposite of birth, with its sense of hope and newborn purity. The juxtaposition lets me suggest the human being as organic matter in the mode of destruction and fana', and the material of the body in all its physical states and expressions. In Egyptian culture life and death are parallel and are often at the same level of being. Resurrection and immortality are basic elements of our heritage." In drawings of disembodied brains and fused animal- human forms one senses the ebullience of El-Noshokaty's discovery of disregarded matter as well as its more subtle spiritual dimensions. As an instance of the premise that human beings are "like any living creature but for their spirit and their ideas" he sketches similarities between the shape of the brain and that of a pomegranate. You may spin out the suggestion of an absent illuminating spirit, or just enjoy the way the artist generates uncannily familiar forms through his exploration of organic matter. El-Noshokaty is unpossessive about this series of his artwork. "I do drawings for myself," he confides. "They are like talk -- I don't think about them too much. In the same way that I might re-word a sentence that doesn't come out quite right the first time, I draw certain images over and over. They form a kind of diary of my thoughts. Drawing is a very personal language and I use it to talk to myself. When I want to communicate more directly with people I use video." This is an unexpected transition -- though perhaps less so for those who have seen El-Noshokaty's recent installations. He elaborates: "There is a strong relationship to the moving image in my drawings and paintings. They develop, and you can see time moving through them." His shift in media is motivated by El-Noshokaty's current preoccupations. The PhD thesis he is preparing is on changes in Egyptian middle class identity in the past decade as a result of new media such as satellite television and the Internet. Video works better, he believes, as a way of addressing identity in this newly mediated social world. "If I had used a video in this exhibit many of these people" -- gesturing at the random patrons of the café next to the Townhouse -- "would probably have come in to see it," he asserts. "They know about the video image. The language of the medium is familiar to them. So when I bring something from my personal history into video I have to think about how the viewer can come to feel a part of the work. Video is communicative, in this way. Through my drawings I can only ever really learn about myself." The conceptual distinctions take shape in El- Noshokaty's newer work in mixed media. An installation at the Nitaq festival of 2001, The tree in my grandmother's house, incorporated video, photography and wax sculpture. "Each medium had a specific role," he explains. "To represent the house of a dead person I chose photography, because it is about fixed images, frozen and dead. The details are all visible and you can sense that the place is empty of spirit. The video added an element of live performance which was interactive. It allowed a dialogue between the viewer and the live image." El-Noshokaty acknowledges that this was "a very private, personal piece", though its aim of elaborating upon middle-class identity is an extension of the artist's larger interest in this changing social milieu. "The question of identity is clearer in my multi- media work. When I use media that can record reality in the form of vital moments, in which you can see the details of a character, it enables a clearer expression of society and its personality. I take ideas for art from people at large and then I reveal to them what I have made of them. This is easier done in a popular, present medium like the moving image." It is not common to find an artist seeking cutting-edge forms while at the same time being engaged with the question of identity. But El-Noshokaty is part of a generation of Egyptian artists who feel their new social position needs to be theorised. "My generation -- which includes Wael Shawky, Moataz Nasr and Amal El-Kenawy -- felt dissatisfied with the available forms of art and the direction of the art movement in Egypt. We were trained in conventional genres such as painting and sculpture, and when we travelled abroad we realised that the movement here was absolutely out of touch with contemporary artistic languages. We had to learn multi-media forms. And we have begun to build a new language with clear features of identity." Other learning experiences for El- Noshokaty came during the Venice Biennale and a sojourn at the Art Institute of Chicago. "There was a real feeling of missed contact between us artists and the outside world. No one knew about Egyptian art. It isn't surprising, when you consider that there are very few curators and critics who give us publicity. Things are now improving. Earlier, a collective exhibit or a biennale would go through the government, which would send its stock artists. Now festival organisers send over curators who look around. They meet with government artists, private gallery personnel, and conduct a thorough search. That is why people like myself have a chance now. " El-Noshokaty has himself been engaged in training next-generation artists through university teaching jobs and, more recently, workshops. The latter approach is a compromise in face of the fact that "we don't have professional ways of teaching media in Egypt." Visiting artists are brought in to teach young students to use media that are ubiquitous and yet rarely incorporated into their education. "The new generation already has a lot of experience with media," El-Noshokaty states, "they just need a vocabulary for expressing themselves through this media." Regeneration seems an apt trope for his experiments with art and artists. The metaphors of rebirth in these strangely vital drawings of sub-human life forms multiply. The widening circle of echoes underlines the spiritual side of El-Noshokaty's art. For exhibition details see Listings
