Ecrire et conter – Découvrez l’exposition de l’IFE !

Artworks focus #1

Produced in 1983 from creations dating from the 1950s by the artist Hamed Abdalla, an emblematic figure of modernism in Egypt, these four pen-and-ink slides are enlarged and suspended in the space in the form of an installation.

Representing the bodies, sometimes embracing, of women and men through Arabic calligraphy, the artist gives the concept of “expressionist letterism” or “word-form” ( الحروفية التعبيرية ), a sensitive dimension through a photographic medium evoking the intimacy of a past, forgotten moment. Fading into the representation of the silhouettes, these fragments of text play on the transparency of the support and are apprehended from both sides, summoning the wandering of the eye in front of this composition of suspended images. A game of superimposition takes place between two slides whose figuration is declined under the letters, and two others, with a more pictorial style, recalling the characteristics of cubism.

Hamed Abdalla (1917-1985), Couple fellah (in Hiéroglyphes arabes series), enlargements of pen-and-ink films on plexiglass, 70×46 cm, 1983, Collection of the Abdalla family, 2022.

Artworks focus #2

Heba Helmi and Cécilia Sagouis Coulon, benefited from the Villa Champollion residency programme at the IFAO’s typographic workshop, supported by the IFE with the expert assistance of Hani Wead.

Heba Helmi

Egyptian ceramic artist, working between France and Egypt.

Her paintings and ceramic pieces were made using hieroglyphic, Arabic and Latin characters in lead. Hieroglyphics are seen as a sacred script and their author is the guardian of the sacred or “one who deals with matters of magic and the occult”. These letters inspired the artist to travel back in time in search of this magic: contemporary spells are made of earthen clay, the first materials on which man inscribed his history, clay stamped with the letters of the printing press invented by the same man after hundreds of thousands of years.

“The strata of Egyptian history are superimposed one on top of the other, so archaeologists are busy deciphering them. I am sailing in the opposite direction, I would like to add more ambiguity. I have blended hieroglyphics with Arabic calligraphy and Coptic weaving arts to create a new magical language composing a work of art that aspires to become a contemporary amulet to delight souls and guide hearts and minds.”

@hebahelmi

Heba Helmi, Talisman 1, various materials, 59 x 103 cm, 2022

Cécilia Sagouis Coulon

Ceramicist and illustrator Cécilia Sagouis Coulon is inspired by traditional Japanese art forms, which she blends with everyday life and Egyptian influences in a striking dialogue.

This set of prints, or Ogiku revisited, bowl and dry garden of inscribed pebbles, is freely inspired by the traditional objects of the Japanese tea ceremony. It recalls the sacred notion of writing, where the sign itself has a magical potentiality as was the case on ancient monuments and objects in hieroglyphic language. In the same way that the Japanese text of an ogiku cannot be deciphered or understood at first sight, and may contain several levels of interpretation; in the same way, the hieroglyphic text, or Arabic or French, may seem mysterious to those who are not familiar with this script.

“I imagined creating an Ogiku from an ancient text in hieroglyphics, a text that could be both sacred and understandable by all. I came across the Song of the Harpist painted on the walls of the tomb of Inerkhaouy, head of a workshop in the village of Deir el Medina, dating from 1150 BC, published by the Ifao. The words of this timeless song are an invitation to enjoy life. [I also chose the hieroglyphic sequence “to adore the sun at its rising” as well as the image of the gesture of adoration of the sun with the hands, from ancient Egypt, which is for me also a universal evocation, a symbol found on several continents.

Cécilia Sagouis Coulon, Bol à matcha d’été, 14.5 x 6 cm, ceramic, 2022

Cécilia Sagouis Coulon, Jardin sec : sept cailloux inscrits, ceramic, 2022

Cécilia Sagouis Coulon, Lune, 37cm x 48 cm, print, collage, 2022

Artworks focus #3

Adrien Monfleur is a French visual artist who graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Marseille. He benefited from the Villa Champollion residency programme at the IFAO typographic workshop, supported by the IFE.

Esse terrae is the project of an exhibition that will focus on the artefacts left by these fifteen beings in a cave in the Egyptian desert. Terracotta masks, embroidered tunics, various objects as well as writings engraved in the rock have been found, proof that this legend was once fulfilled.

Conceived in an autonomous way and exhibited on the occasion of the exhibition « Écrire et Conter », this print confronts two temporalities, materialized by hieroglyphs and this holographic material; a way of questioning the history of humanity, its continuum, its repetitions and its evolution by focusing on the relationship that human beings have with power and the transmission of knowledge.

She illustrates a fictional legend: “When one and the same man has taken power over humans, wildlife, the flore and the elements, the Earth will choose fifteen men and women whom she will deprive of their senses to teach them the knowledge of the laws and principles that govern it.”

Adrien Monfleur, Esse terrae, fleecy holographic vinyl, 42 x 29.7 cm, 2022

Artworks focus #4

Haytham Nawar is a practicing artist and designer, as well as a scholar in the fields of art and design. He has built his professional and academic career over the past two decades, simultaneously fulfilling different roles.

This project uses artificial intelligence to create a new language that can be understood by all cultures and is part of the « Écrire et Conter » exhibition because of its innovation in bridging hieroglyphics and emojis.

The aim of this project is to produce a generative pictographic language using machine learning. A program is fed with a database of 180 vector writing systems: pictographic, ideographic, logographic, syllabary and semi-syllabary writing systems, and segmental scripts (Abjads and Alphabets). The project uses several databases such as Unicode and Omniglot using character block images and has applied StyleGAN with additional editing/programming tools.

The pictographic language existing in all early human scripts is a crucial cornerstone in the theoretical argument of universal iconography common to all writing systems. The fact that all independently derived writing systems appeared as arrangements of pictographs before evolving into sophisticated forms is evidence of the significant iconographic nature of writing as a concept.

Haytham Nawar, Generative Pictographic Language, 3D prints, artist’s book, prints 70 x 100 cm, 2021

@haythamnawar

Artworks focus #5

Mohamed El-Agaty is a professional calligrapher based in Dubai who started his career in calligraphy 8 years ago.

The work is composed of interconnected letters of different colours and shapes, which are very similar to our community which comes from different backgrounds, different cultures. The letter, in 3D, then occupies the space, moves and surrounds the viewer, as a metaphor for the permanent environment of letters and words that surrounds our daily lives, without perhaps us seeing them yet. In reference to Dubai, where he lives, the artist sees it as a representation of a community of over 120 nationalities: each and every one of them forming a strong and prosperous society by working together.

“No matter who we are as individuals, we can create wonders if we unite and work for a better world.

Mohamed Agaty, Unity in Diversity, print on polycotton canvas, virtual reality programme, 100 x 100 cm, 2021

@agaty

Artworks focus #6

Hazem El Mestikawy is an Egyptian visual artist born in 1965, of Swiss origin, who lives between Cairo and Alexandria.

The work of Hazem El Mestikawy ingeniously assimilates ancient Egyptian and Islamic art and architecture, as well as contemporary philosophies of minimal art, such as the Bauhaus.  Hazem El Mestikawy’s practice oscillates between the realms of architecture, design, sculpture and visual deception, and one of its intriguing aspects is the use of cardboard and cardboard-based materials to design installations that are environmentally friendly and at the same time appear solid and impenetrable. The artist plays with fragile materials, light and shadow, volume and the surrounding space to create deceptively light forms, challenging the boundaries between the ephemeral nature of the material and the durable nature of the artistic product.

This cardboard sculpture, made up of four interlocking modules, reveals, through its stone-like volumes, the same message in geometric Arabic calligraphy: “I am the other”. This message, which can be read in four different directions, forms a perfect square on the floor and gives this work a philosophical and literary character, which can be compared to the formula used by Rimbaud (1854-1891) in a letter to Paul Demeny dated 15 May 1871: “I am another”. Another key reading could be that of a message anchored in a stone wall, addressed to the climate refugees of the times to come and signalling to the other, its ontological reciprocity.

Hazem El Mestikawy, I am the Other,  cardboard, recycled paper, 105 x 105 x 18 cm, Vienna, 2014, Courtesy of Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art

@mashrabiagallery @hazemmestikawy

Artworks focus #7

Mahmoud Tamman is an Egyptian artist and graphic designer, living and working in Alexandria.

Started in 2015, the Arabic Letters project is an experimental work of illustration and typography, inspired by zoomorphic calligraphy which aims to transform Arabic words into the shape of their meanings. This tradition is reinterpreted here and allows a more contemporary, less academic reading.

The words become illustrations and allow the image of the object or animated being to appear in their construction. This series of twenty prints punctuates the stroll of visitors down the stairs of the French Institute of Egypt, leading to the Department of Teaching Contemporary Arabic DEAC.

Mahmoud Tammam, Arabic Letters, 20 prints, 60 x 60 cm, 2022

@mt_designs_

The exhibition is opened at the Institut français d’Egypte (IFE) and l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) in Cairo, from October 10th to November 14th.