To wake up in the city

From 15 March, and for 10 days, Cairo is to become a veritable visual arts feast: the Ministry of Culture-sponsored Cairo Biennale at the Centre of Arts, the British Council-sponsored London Nomad exhibition at Beit Zeinab Khatoun, a seminar on Contemporary Curatorial Practice at the American University in Cairo -- and the Karim Francis-, William Wells- and Stefania Angarano organised downtown Nitaq Festival of contemporary arts which, in addition to visual arts, the focus of the festival, will feature music, theatre, film and poetry. Nur Elmessiri and Youssef Rakha met with two of the three Nitaq Festival organisers
If we can talk a bit about the history, definition and goal of the Nitaq festival?
WW: We originally assumed that nitaq meant neighbourhood, district, quarter... and there was a lot of discussion about the relationship between Talaat Harb Square and the Orion's belt group of stars [in Arabic nitaq means "belt"], but basically I like the idea of the downtown neighbourhood...
The idea of the Nitaq Festival has evolved, I'm sure Stefania would agree with me. Originally, last year, it was the Downtown galleries, and we wanted to use the Downtown area as a backdrop, a sort of late 19th, early 20th century backdrop for contemporary art. The history of the fine arts in the district, the history of cinema, of theatre, everything happens downtown, you feel it was born there. And yet the area hasn't really seen a lot of investment, it hasn't been generally refurbished. So it's in a state of decay, but it's still incredibly beautiful, people spend a lot of time downtown just looking at the buildings, the architecture, so it is a perfect place to show contemporary art. And I think we wanted to do something together, and that was the obvious thing.
And this year's Nitaq?....
WW: This year's timing of Nitaq with the biennale is important because the Nitaq itself isn't strong enough to invite a large international audience. No way are we ready for that. But with the biennale and the international artists and the status of the international artists who are coming...
The biennale itself, we have to be honest, was a low grade biennale for some time, but now it's gained in stature and the government has developed a policy where it's starting to be more selective about who they make requests for other governments to send. Nancy Spiro and Mona Hatoum last time were really good examples of top international artists that showed up. This year they've gone even further and you have Marina Abranovitch, Tracy Emin, Judith Barry -- these are people that are more controversial on the international art scene, and they've been invited to Cairo... So with them and the status of the biennale being raised, a lot of people are coming, but because the biennale itself is not a first class biennale like Venice, an added boost would be having the Nitaq Festival at the same time, so that the whole city becomes an art centre for a 10 day period... It is not just the biennale audience; the artists who are showing in Nitaq also have their own audience, local and international: they've been exhibiting abroad, and have been encouraging people to come to this event.
At the same time you have the AUC seminar [Contemporary International Curatorial Practice: East Inflecting West, 17 to 24 March]. They're bringing out curators to Cairo and important speakers. They are inviting important people who will be here at the same time, and they're going to use the Nitaq and the biennale as part of their program to talk about art in the region, art in Cairo, and art globalisation.
Also at the same time the British Council is having their London Nomad exhibition, which includes many of the top British artists showing today. They've taken over Beit Zeinab Khatoun and their exhibition, to say the least, it should be traumatic... you have such big names, and four of the artists are actually arriving as well, and with them of course will come a contingent of people who will want to see their work and see it because it's the first time its been exhibited in the region...
This coincides with Nitaq, it coincides with the seminar, and it coincides with the biennale. So there will be more art and visual arts events going on in Cairo than ever in its history, as far as I know, certainly in its modern history, and the concentration is on contemporary art...
More people are looking to Cairo as an art centre for the region than ever before. A comparable city would be Beirut and they have a very strong contemporary art scene but they don't have what we have here: a centre, a historical centre to focus on the arts... In terms of press coverage, nothing has happened here that has been big enough to warrant international press coverage until now. The city now has enough going on for a 10-day period for people to take notice, and hopefully positive notice, because I think the art that they're going to see is not what they're expecting. I would think that with the concentration on installation, and installation is new in Egypt, that's probably one of the reasons that we're highlighting it in Nitaq, because we want people to see that there is good installation work going on here, and it's not a language that is unfamiliar to Egyptian artists; they handle it very well.
So I think when you're talking about Nitaq this year the focus for us was to be a part of all that, and also to expand the audience for Egyptian artists. There are six Egyptian artists in the biennale. Nitaq has extended that, so you got over 50 Egyptian artists who will be able to show their work to this wider public that's coming to Cairo. So our focus is a showcase for Egyptian contemporary work, ultimately.
Why was the press conference that you held this January so low key in spite of last year's event being a success? Was there not enough publicity?
WW: The Nitaq Festival has not been publicised yet; there hasn't been much publicity about the Cairo Biennale either, and it's at the same time... There are no posters out. From 1 March everything comes out in the magazines, the invitations will go out, it will be much more visible.
The artists have shown sketches and proposals, what the work is based on, but other than painting all the work that is being produced for Nitaq is still under production. Paintings we have... We have all the venues, and we have the work, all we have to do is decide, just for the paintings... we just have to say OK does that painting go on that wall, does that painting go in that window?... those kinds of things we can only judge when everybody brings the paintings to the gallery on 10 March and we'll say OK this is where your painting will go...
Insight magazine is sponsoring all the printed material. For visual arts, everything in the festival will be open from 10 to 10 daily.
For the music, we have the Greek Club and we have the Rio Cinema in Bab Al-Louq. Music is slightly different. It's more difficult to fix a music programme, so the actual programme won't be available till a few days before the festival. At this stage in the game, I can honestly say that three, four days ago, there was a certain amount of "oh my god, is this thing really going to happen" because the scale of it is so large and it involves so many people. But it's definitely happening, it's on course, and I feel very very good about it and you [Stefania] probably feel the same as well, it is going to happen. I remember last year the day that we opened, I had journalists coming to me and saying it's not going to happen, and then the next day they came to me and said my god we're trying to catch up on events, because they didn't believe it and then they had to chase things too late. So it is going to happen.
Other than painting, are the Nitaq art works site-specific productions?
WW: Yes. Absolutely.
SA: Especially for installations...
WW: Which is what we are definitely focusing on this year.
Last year we were limited in spaces. This year we're not so limited, so apart from the four galleries where you have Essam Maarouf at Mashrabiya [and also poetry readings], Ahmed Nosseir at Espace, Bassem the Alexandrian artist at Cairo-Berlin, and at Townhouse Shadi El-Nushoqati, Mona Marzouq, Amina Mansour and Wael Shawqi...
One thing that Stefania and I have felt very very strongly about... is that this is a visual arts festival, the visual side dominates, this is really important...
SA: In last year's Nitaq Festival we put all [visual arts, music, theatre, poetry, film] on the same level, but this year it was important to place a focus on the visual arts...
WW: We'll see how it evolves... About the location of the galleries, they cover almost a kilometre. So there are the four galleries, and the Goethe Institut [and the Indian Cultural Centre, for film] as well. Within that square kilometre, we have taken a floor, seven rooms, of the Gresham Hotel, a hundred metres from Talaat Harb Square, for installation and painting. The Greek Club will have installation work and paintings [and music, and lectures about the city of Cairo]. Below the Greek Club is Groppi's. Groppi's has had a restaurant that has been closed since the 1980s, a very large space, we've taken that for installations and paintings. And the top of Mahmoud Bassiouni here, the passageway to the Grillon, before you enter the passageway, just to your right is the Pasha building. It's a 19th century structure, early 20th century, beautiful building, and we've taken a floor of that as well...
SA: And Talaat Harb Square...
WW: Well let's do the interiors first. And also the Internet café directly at the very top of this road, we have that, the rooms in the back.
A lot of these places have spaces that are actually empty and not being used. In fact the floor of the Gresham that we've taken I, to be honest, don't think has been used for years. And Groppi's restaurant, it's been closed up for years. The old Viennoise Hotel here on Mahmoud Bassiouni and Champollion, that whole building has been closed for I don't know how many years, and we have a floor of that as well... The Italian Institute on Galaa, a bit far, but still within the limit... the Cleopatra Hotel, we've taken all the windows of the Cleopatra... Obviously, we have the Atelier Cairo as well, the top floor... Hassan El-Geretly's Warsha space on Sherif St, that will be included as well... And then, as Stefania was saying, we have Midan Talaat Harb...
Did you get permission to use Midan Talaat Harb from the governor of Cairo? I mean how does one get the midan?
SA: From rabbina (God) ...(she laughs)
WW: (He laughs) It's the buildings on the midan that will have works... the works will be on the facade of the buildings. It's a very unusual exhibition, it's definitely something...
And will it last through the festival?
WW: Yes throughout the festival. And then Sherifein St, which is actually in front of Karim's gallery, obviously a place where there's going to be music, there's going to be children's art.. there will be large outdoor sculptures in the pedestrian passageway...
SA: And we have a lot of shop windows ... it's nice to concern the people that are living in Downtown, to feel that they're a part of Downtown.
WW: Originally shops were very hesitant and now they're coming to us and saying, well, we could put a painting in.
So will it be a surprise for the people living Downtown or will they be warned? Will they know that there's something that's going to happen on the 15th, or will they wake up and walk out of their houses and suddenly find all of this?
WW: Well they certainly will in some places. Because the plan is that there'll be musicians roaming around the areas and passages, so you could be walking down the street or sitting in a coffee shop and suddenly find there's someone playing the saxophone, and you think this has got to do with something, let's find what...
The artists themselves, are they predominantly young?
WW: Yeah on the whole. We actually invited four artists, that didn't go into any selection. You've got Sobhi Girgis, for example, he's not a young man but you couldn't get anyone more contemporary in his way of thinking. We've invited him to produce work; we invited Rehab Sadeq to produce work; Mohamed Tamini to produce work, he's just out of college, so there's a wide range, I think, but without a doubt I would say that the majority of people are young, in their 30s.
Are they excited about the whole concept?
WW: Very excited, very nervous, because they know how important it is, and they know the opportunity that they're getting...
Is there a theme for the festival? Have common themes emerged -- do the artists take into consideration the downtown area, draw attention to the city or to the space?
WW: No, I would say not. This year I can't say we have done that. That would have limited the people we could show. For example the work of artists exhibiting at Townhouse during the Nitaq is not just for this Downtown region. It's an exhibition that's meant to travel around the Middle East. We're already booked for this work to go. We avoided the idea of a theme because we did not want to limit ourselves. We thought about this last year as well.
What kind of thing were you looking for? And does this kind of work reflect the full range of what's going on in Egypt?
WW: The full range of the contemporary movement definitely.
What was your criteria in chosing?
SA: It's the same question when people come and ask how you chose which artists to exhibit... it's quality, originality, it's... contemporary work. And I don't think the criteria are different for the Nitaq. Maybe one additional criteria is for the installation, because the relationship between work and space is more precise. But the criteria of quality are the same.
WW: This goes back to what we were talking about. This is a major opportunity to highlight -- to showcase -- what's going on in Egypt. We're sitting here, and we may agree that there's a standard of professionalism that you see and that is being presented in the country, but that is not necessarily being acknowledged outside of Cairo. And this is an opportunity for it to be acknowledged. We're highlighting the very fact that international art language is being used here regularly by Egyptian artists. And it'll probably be the first time that people realise just how international these artists are, because they travel. People don't realise that, even I think, probably the local press isn't aware of the amount of outside exhibitions that Egyptian artists have participated in regularly, individually... They're going to Rome, to Germany, to Paris, London, New York, and it's not generally advertised because they're doing it individually. There isn't a cohesive network that people could actually go to and say my god this is actually happening, that there are professionals working in Cairo on a regular basis representing concepts created in Cairo. There simply isn't...If you want this information, you would come to a gallery and I would talk to you about a limited number of artists, and Stefania would talk to you about a limited number of artists, and so on... But now we're actually saying, now look this is what we've got here, as much for the local audience to be aware of what they've got here...
In the context of the international art scene, how would you describe Egyptian art, is there anything distinctive about it?
WW: I would say for the installation work that the standard is extremely high and what makes it different, and so interesting for Europeans and Americans, is that the issues that are being addressed all come from living in Egypt, they are regional issues. These are artists that live here; they're born here; they work here and they are dealing with concepts that affect everybody.
If you take say one example, Shadi El-Nushoqati's work, Shadi's dealing with a subject that is very personal from the area that he lives in, his grandmother's roots, and it would immediately get a response from any Egyptian in the street because they would recognise the symbols that he's using, the language that he's using; the imagery is an Egyptian imagery, like the creation of a tomb for example, an Egyptian tomb, that's not something that as an image would be selected by somebody that is living abroad.
And, another example, is Hassan Khan's video art. The visuals are from Cairo and they're dealing with events that are taking place in buildings in Cairo, where it is Egyptians making the exchanges. People would be able to recognise the places immediately, and they'll identify with those issues. And I think Bassem, who will be exhibiting at Cairo-Berlin, his issues are international, but there's an Alexandrian element in his work. Nazir Tomboli, his exhibition is about people, the desire to emigrate, and the reasons they want to emigrate, he's looking at that. He has these wonderful, distorted portraits, they're very funny, sarcastic to an extent, with the text underneath. There are very few Egyptians who, when they walk into the exhibition, even if its the first time they've been to a gallery, will not be able to recognise that immediately, the desire to travel that they've seen on TV, something that might seem almost ludicrous outside, but it relates to what's going on here and it works visually and artistically...
Lara Baladi has actually produced three huge billboards of her work, works of art that are being done by billboard artists, one of which will be in Tahrir Square, one out in the Pyramids, and one will go into the area of Al-Qolali, a very public area of the city... [Baladi's photo installation at the Viennoise]... you get lost in all of these rooms... it is based on a video game. All the photographs were taken in that building and it's actually called Sundouq Al-Dunya, and it's the sister piece of something she did in Paris, Umm Al-Dunya, the opposite, not the sister, because the other one is so bright and cheerful. This is like walking into a video game, submitting to your deepest, darkest fears.
Like virtual reality?
WW: You're not using a screen... the images are all based on Japanese cartoon characters, with those women, those really sexist characters, you must know them, they're all over the world... they're everywhere. Her characters are based on that, so you get Alice in Wonderland comes out of Umm Al-Dunya and finds herself in this building, and she discovers her other side, and what we go through in life. We're presented with every bit of it. It's quite incredible.
I took the artists to the floor of the Gresham the other day and I said OK let's look at the space, and the guy walked into the room and part of the ceiling had fallen down. And I thought this is really embarrassing, but the artist said well actually maybe it'll really work with my installation... it's that kind of scenario.
Programmes will be available at all Nitaq venues from the first day of the festival and at townhouse.com from 13 March
Recommend this page
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor