Mother as beholder

Marie-Therese Abdel-Messih explores 's multi-faceted picture making
The nature-culture interchange is conceived in terms of mother-daughter relationships in Zeinab El- Segeini's (b. 1930) paintings and what may appear a thematic concern actually configures the mutations between an old world and a new world. In her most recent exhibition, at the Zamalek Gallery, Zeinab recaptures the quality of ancient Egyptian art, making use of its religious and profane traditions. She takes over designs and styles derived from the past to develop them in inventive ways. If art historians have arbitrarily divided Egyptian art history into pharaonic, Coptic and Islamic, Zeinab's works close this supposed divide: they even challenge the key discourse of canonical art history based on the ineradicable distinction between high and low art.
Significantly, Zeinab had no formal training in painting. She holds the position of professor at the Faculty of Art Education, but has escaped being institutionalised in the European representational techniques taught within the painting department. She insists that she avoids representation from life, which explains her prioritisation of textural and tonal qualities above detail. Spontaneity safeguards first hand experience against preconceived ideas. She represents her lived experiences as a sequence of reflections on the mother child relationship in a cultural context. The recurrence of this theme does not propagate for a matriarchy, but explores inborn matrilineal relationships interconnecting live creatures with organic and inorganic elements.
The recurrent mother-child theme is set in different compositions representing a varied scale of emotions. Joy, fear or anxiety is represented in abstract terms through tonal variations and modulations of light proceeding from an unidentified source. Trees, hills, sand dunes, flora and fauna, earth and water invite the viewer to explore different moods. The harmony between seemingly opposed elements as, for example, solid earth and fluid water, complement the harmony in the mother child relationship. One wonders whether the harmony in the natural landscape echoes the mother child relationship, or the mother child relationship represents that which is already inherent in nature. The beholder and the beheld interchange positions.
The mother-child image is always set in a social or ecological context. The technique used is non- mimetic. The images of known objects or creatures are represented in simplified forms, whether curved or angular, a technique derived from a long tradition of Egyptian design. However, in the process of representation traditional design is acquitted from its formal rigidity to represent an emotional experience. The line is also used to configure rhythm, a core principle achieving formal unity. The rhythmic flow helps the viewer explore the interconnections within different objects to produce meaning. Rhythm is the dynamic force of the whole composition. Significantly, the line, the principle of design acquired through culture, is used to codify spontaneous experience stimulated by natural forces. The nature culture paradox is a question this exhibition explores.
The rhythm of lines and the tones of colour represent life situations in terms of mood and character. Motion in the paintings is set by the interconnections relating the different forms, or is directed by the movement of organic members or inorganic components. Arms and limbs perform an equal function to that of boughs and branches, or even chair legs or architectural constructions. Motion stimulates the rotation of the viewer's eye, urging her/him to read the suggested passions inherent in the representation. Variation in colour helps the viewer see into the meaning carried by the opened or unopened eyes. Colour variation in the background sets the mood of the representation.
Motion is also produced by textural variations blurring sharp linear boundaries that may have produced a static composition. Organic or inorganic elements may not bear distinct textural characteristics but develop varied cadences. The effect produced is a formal harmony that in turn represents a spiritual harmony binding separate elements. By linking line, colour and texture in a rhythmic pattern, the elements in the painting will speak to the viewer in gesticulations.
The figures are neither mute nor uncommunicative, but reticent. Such reticence transforms the worldly into a wordless meaning. The process of arranging the disconnected lines of desultory objects creates balance, transforming discord into concord. The repetitive arrangement and rearrangement of figurative elements gradually transforms them into a form of adornment, reminiscent of the principles of Islamic manuscript design.
In her latest paintings, though, Zeinab even challenges this process of adornment and technical refinement. Her awareness of the vital qualities of primitive art and her interest in automatism has made her work towards enhancing the unconscious in recent, experimental paintings. Earlier, the background in some paintings was covered in gold paper, a technique borrowed from Coptic icons. Now, the background becomes rough and unpolished to give the effect of stone, or a magic fabric weaving the dream world of the unconscious. Perhaps the untutored artist takes steps further to shirk off technical bridles of her own making. It is as though she has realised that technical innovation is a break with the cannon, even if it is self-made.
Today the range of daily visual experience has vastly widened to incorporate various styles, old and new. Throughout her artistic career Zeinab has made use of styles belonging to different historical epochs of Egyptian art. She does not produce a hybrid product that allows for ambivalent readings but develops continuities in style that have survived despite recurrent visual transformations. Now has come the moment for her to dig deep into the subconscious to release images without any fixed theme. The social or ecological background has been replaced by an empty space, with the figures appearing like petroglyphs on the walls of a stone cave.
In her latest experiments Zeinab seems to be searching for beginnings rather than reaching ends. In earlier paintings the mother child image was seen as part of a social or ecological context representing the nature-culture interface. By giving greater vent to her spontaneity, Zeinab shifts to a space where the "motherchild" becomes a single species. Throughout her career Zeinab has tried to recreate a pictorial identity that profits from an extended artistic tradition. At present she is at a crossroads, realising that identity is partly achieved by recovering the spontaneous process of its formation. Zeinab's exhibition raises the question as to whether cultural identity is intuited or constructed.
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