Injy El-Kashef relishes an encounter between brush strokes and Egypt's unfamiliar tribes photos: Mohamed Wassim In an unprecedented initiative among private art galleries, eight local artists set up a workshop in the heart of the southeastern desert, in the national park of Wadi Al-Gemal in Marsa Alam, in order to document a meeting between dozens of tribes hailing from all corners of the Egyptian desert on the occasion of the Second Annual Characters of Egypt Festival. At the Gauguin Gallery, a current exhibition of the same title showcases the fruit of the three-day workshop, which filled a deep, long-standing gap in the history of Egyptian art. While some impressive and prestigious art work -- not least Gazbia Sirry's -- has been based on Nubia and its community, the inhabitants of the oases of the Western Desert have not fared so well, although their natural surroundings have been a prominent subject for a number of artists, including Adly Rizkallah. Yet, when it comes to the dwellers of the eastern and southern deserts, although they are arguably the oldest Egyptians alive, artwork documenting their existence amounts to nothing. Indeed, the Ababda and Bisharia tribes, both sub-groups of the Beja tribe of Hamitic origin and speaking a language identified as te-bdewi and perpetuating a culture that has remained virtually unchanged for centuries, have guarded the southern Egyptian border and the eastern coastline for millennia. The artwork on display at the Gauguin Gallery offers glimpses of the Ababda and Bisharia captured in mixed media by eight artists and portrayed in forms ranging from the more abstract to the painstakingly intricate. Inspired by lines carved by time on the tribesmen's faces, engulfed by their music, caught up in their storytelling and surrounded by their everyday tools, the workshop's artists reveal their perceptions of these almost forgotten people, who have never featured in the country's collective memory, although they existed before it even developed one. Ahmed Samih's minimalist watercolours portray faceless, featureless people, who are yet still individuals squatting in typical Bishari fashion as they stare at you without eyes and seem to ask, "Do you see me now?" Relying on two colours, Samih's lines are assertive and asserting, as if aiming to document the tribesmen's reality without overburdening it with so much as facial features or surrounding context. Insolent blue on a white background, their presence is radical and unwavering, isolated but existent, captured, there. Perihan Abu Zeid's bright palimpsests instantly call to mind Baudelaire's objects of desire, Abyssinian idols and Haitian goddesses of sensuality -- exotic, mysterious, mystical. Her details add up to more than the sum of their parts, the layered inscriptions, the countless crescent moons filling the spaces beyond reason, culminating in incantation, the summoning up of unseen forces, dark and unfathomable, and a whirlwind of energy relying on every form and every colour to mesmerize and entrance. Reminiscent of the work of Esmat Dawestashi, Abu Zeid's work is a medley of reason and magic, deeply grounded in earthly motifs, yet unmistakably feminine at its core. Mona Hassan's pastels are curvaceous like the desert's dunes. Her multilayered, abstract paintings undulate in seemingly infinite, winding forms, shadowy yet absolute, like destiny. The palette is dark, the lines are generous, the spaces endless, extending beyond the borders of the frame. Asmaa Ahmed's detailed impressionistic drawings are expressive, calm, smiling, outlined in rainbow colours, like being enveloped in an otherworldly aura belonging to a dimension that only the lucky few can recognise. Her portraits are as people would be if only they allowed rainbows to settle. Nader El-Sayed's dark backgrounds, on the other hand, catapult his figures forward, like a distinctive recollection jutting out of a foggy memory. His oils grab you from the opposite end of the exhibition hall, imposing and loud, knowing that you will enjoy the certitude they manifest and establish a rapport with their models. Ayman El-Qadry, whose documentary output is perhaps the most varied, draws on everyday tools and utensils, summoning a larger picture that bespeaks a whole mode of living complete with gabana coffee, camel carts and semsemeyas. His comic-strip style of drawing celebrates every crease of a tunic's fabric, every twist of a rope, every string of a tassle. It is festive, musical, colourful, happy to know that these men exist. Ahmed El-Gananini's bold paintings, on the other hand, encapsulate a series of struggles centred on subject matter: the perception of an abstract world and the reality of specific details, tentative interpretation and categorical declaration, fusion and boundaries, watered undertones and saturated chrome explode out of the canvases. The only sculptor in the exhibit, Nathan Dows, captures movement with genius. His camels are in the grip of a distinctive momentum, their heads and limbs sculpted to relay a constant shifting motion, while even his sand- baked bread sculptures seem to display evidence of motion at the subatomic level. The Characters of Egypt exhibition is a feat for which the artists, as well as the gallery's workshop initiative encompassing travel to the deep south of Egypt and endurance of the harsh desert environment, must be heartily congratulated. Yet, unfortunately the opportunity to capture this historical occasion for communication between the different tribes, as they shared music and food, played siga tournaments and discussed their tribal laws, went untapped by the workshop. The artwork portrays individuals in isolation, whereas an assortment of costumes, headgear and human exchange on the same canvas would have enriched both the fruit of the workshop's efforts and the comprehensiveness of the ensuing documentation witnessing such tribal interactions. It cannot be stressed enough, however, that a visit to the Gauguin Gallery's exhibition provides uncontested evidence of the fact that the desert tribesmen, hitherto marginalised though they constitute the longest historical thread among those weaving the fabric of Egyptian identity, have finally found representation on the local art scene. One can only hope that this new treasure trove will now snowball into a wealth of depictions by contemporary artists, who will follow suit and face the challenge of the desert's scorching sun in order to contribute to the posterity of its inhabitants. Gauguin Gallery, 8 Samir Zaki St, off Mohamed Mazhar St, Ismail Yassin Bldg, Zamalek. The exhibition runs until 27 December, daily except Mon, 12 noon-3pm & 5pm- 10pm.
