Later this month, the Acropolis Museum and The Lemon Tree & Co. Athens-Riviera will host a novel exhibition, “A Story of Two Cities.” The exhibition, the primary half of which runs till July 16, spotlights millennia-old historic and cultural hyperlinks between Athens and the Egyptian metropolis of Alexandria, the place the second half of the exhibition will probably be hosted on the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and Graeco-Roman Museum in October.
The exhibition, historic and modern in equal measure, is typical of its organizer, the French Egyptian curator and artwork adviser Nadine Abdel Ghaffar. Practically 10 years in the past, Ghaffar based the artwork consultancy Artwork D’Egypte to unravel an issue: modern Egyptian artwork has lengthy struggled to achieve the identical sort of worldwide recognition as its wealth of historic artifacts and monumental archaeological landmarks. Slightly than attempt to escape the historic, Ghaffar as an alternative determined to merge with it, creating high-profile exhibitions that leverage iconic websites just like the Nice Pyramids of Giza as a backdrop to create a dialogue between the historic and the modern.
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“The entire concept is to go away from the white dice to have significant pairings with heritage or the house we’re in,” Ghaffar informed ARTnews. “It’s a cultural platform. My view is that you just can not separate heritage from artwork, from music, from theater, from cinema, from design. It’s all intertwined.”
Artwork D’Egypte’s most notable sequence is the recurring “Ceaselessly Is Now” exhibition, which held its third version final November. Staged on the Giza Plateau, the exhibition featured large-scale sculptures and installations from 14 artists, lots of whom drew inspiration from the situation. For instance, Saudi Arabian artist Rashed Al Shashai, whose works have appeared within the 2021 Diryah Biennale and a number of editions of the Noor Riyadh mild pageant, created the site-specific set up, Translucent Pyramid, a 20-foot-tall pyramid constructed from wicker crates. Egyptian artist Mohamed Banawy, in the meantime, contributed As Above, So Beneath (Dome of Starry Sky), the 30-foot-tall set up of starfish-shape sculptures mounted on rods, referring to an historic Egyptian textual content.
Mohamed Banawy’s As Above, So Beneath (Dome of Starry Sky), on the “Ceaselessly Is Now” exhibition in Giza, Egypt.
Courtesy of CulturVator
In 2022 Ghaffar launched CulturVator as an evolution of Artwork D’Égypte. Whereas Artwork D’Égypte focuses on native artwork, the bigger model, CulturVator, focuses on a broader cultural scope to incorporate artwork, cinema, style, and worldwide initiatives, as with “A Story of Two Cities.” That exhibition will characteristic seven artists on the Acropolis Museum and 5 on the Lemon Tree restaurant in Athens. The Acropolis Museum will showcase three Greek artists and 4 Egyptian artists, primarily from Alexandria. In the meantime, the Lemon Tree, with an iconic sister restaurant in Egypt, will show works solely by Egyptian artists. The lineup contains notable names resembling Costas Varotsos, Danae Stratou, Omar Toussoun, Stated Badr, and Karim El Hayawan.
“As a Greek artist, I see this exhibition as a artistic dialogue between two historic hubs of tradition and mind,” Dionysios Ka, whose work appeared in final November’s “Ceaselessly Is Now” present and can seem within the upcoming exhibition, informed ARTnews. “By bridging these two cities, Nadine is managing to reunite the wealthy historic ties—celebrating the intertwined narratives and welcoming viewers to replicate on the enduring legacy of those vibrant cities.”
On the coronary heart of CulturVator’s work is a deep respect for historical past and its preservation. For “Ceaselessly Is Now”, a mattress of sand 50 centimeters thick was laid down earlier than putting any paintings on the Giza website with a purpose to defend the underlying historic floor. For the 2017 exhibition “Everlasting Gentle: One thing Outdated, One thing New” at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, Ghaffar paired greater than a dozen modern artworks with the museum’s historic artifacts to attract out their connections. She additionally collaborated with Azza Fahmy Jewelry to curate a particular protecting field to showcase the jewellery of Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Nineteenth-century chief of Egypt, and his daughter, the primary time the gadgets had been exhibited to visitors. CulturVator/Artwork D’Égypte and its outreach have even operated underneath UNESCO patronage for its “safety and promotion of the variety of cultural expression.”
An set up shot from CulturVator’s “If the Partitions May Speak” exhibition at Cairo’s Salah El-Din Citadel, one of many metropolis’s most well-known landmarks.
Courtesy of CulturVator
The mission to protect cultural heritage has turn into solely extra very important as city growth threatens historic websites. In recent times, the fast transformation of Cairo has led to quite a few historic tombs, cemeteries, and different historic landmarks being leveled for brand spanking new developments and roadways. Since 2020, for instance, the Egyptian authorities has progressively demolished the historic Metropolis of the Useless mausoleum, a UNESCO World Heritage website. These efforts have continued over the past 12 months. In the meantime, in January, the federal government demolished the enduring modern arts middle Darb 1718, positioned within the Fustat neighborhood, to make approach for an elevated freeway. The neighborhood, a lot of which has since been demolished, was referred to as the house of Cairo’s final conventional craftspeople.
“You don’t dwell for your self,” Ghaffar mentioned, including that from a younger age she was raised with a community-focused mindset. “You’re on the market within the universe to do issues for others.”
By Artwork D’Egypte and CulturVator, Ghaffar has labored to create a virtuous ecosystem, using a whole bunch of staff to construct out the exhibitions, as effectively horse-and-carriage drivers to information guests on artwork excursions. In response to Ghaffar, the group’s mission of selling Egypt has led to such staff taking satisfaction of their contributions to the exhibition, changing into buddies with the exhibiting artists, and studying the tales of the artworks to show guests. This community-first ethos is probably greatest expressed by the truth that CulturVator’s exhibitions open with a public opening; non-public VIP showings come within the later days.
Ghaffar’s initiatives have boosted art-centric tourism, drawing worldwide guests who attend particularly for the occasions she organizes. Greater than a thousand VIPs traveled to go to her “Ceaselessly Is Now” exhibition, based on the group.
Mohamed Awad, an architectural historian and a marketing consultant to the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, informed ARTnews that “Nadine’s cultural manifestations deliver Egyptian artwork to our modern tradition. The motto is: pleased with being Egyptian.”