Egyptian artist Georges Bahgory, acknowledged worldwide as a portraitist and painter, turned sculptor at this year's 13th Aswan International Sculpture Symposium, as Reham El-Adawi explains While this is the first year that Georges Bahgory has himself taken part in the Aswan Symposium, he has long attended the event in order to view the works on show, and curator Adam Henein, a friend from Paris, and the Romanian sculptor Dimitri Cusa have often encouraged him to try his hand at sculpture. "The 35 years I spent in Paris made me believe in using all forms and media, something Egyptian artists don't often do. Instead, they tend to confine themselves to the one discipline they specialise in, rather than trying out different forms," Bahgory says. Eager to try out new forms and materials, Bahgory began to sculpt in bronze, before moving on to wood and exhibiting some extraordinary works last year at the Mahmoud Mukhtar Museum in Cairo. This year's Aswan Symposium saw Bahgory shift to another medium, granite, which, he says, has enormously impressed him. "Standing before a piece of granite, trying to give it shape, I feel as if I am intimately talking to God, or praying. It is as if I become closer to the soul of the universe by trying to get to the inner depth of the stone and attempting to uncover its secrets," he explains. This year's Symposium is Bahgory's first experience in sculpting granite, something which would have been impossible without the help of an assistant, and he was excited at having the opportunity to work alongside such distinguished sculptors as Haruko Yamashta from Japan, Antonios Myrodias from Greece and Ahmed Qaarly from Egypt. His work in this medium is very much a spontaneous effort, not guided by any preconceived ideas. Instead, he has simply let himself be inspired, chiselling his well-known figures into the stone and entering the Symposium with a figure that has the face of a woman and a child and is posed as if struggling to free itself from its granite cast. Sculpted in rose granite, the sculpture measures 3x1x1 metres. Bahgory has left the base of the figure rough, making no attempt to smooth the stone. This means that the work blends harmoniously with the sandy environment where it is exhibited, giving it a pleasingly naïve appearance.
