Beyond 'Airbrushed from Art History' (7)

Magdy William, a student under the late Dr. Isaac Fanous, the founder of the school of modern Coptic painting and the initiator of the modern renaissance in Coptic art, has been one of the world’s premier Coptic icon artists for several decades. In addition to his work beautifying countless churches throughout Egypt and around the world, he has held solo exhibitions in Europe and Australia. His next major European exhibition will be in Norway in 2012 where over three hundred of his icons will be exhibited in three cities simultaneously. His studio is located along the Nile in Maadi at the Coptic Orthodox Church of St. George.

 
His current exhibition, The Eternal Eye, opened today at St John’s Maadi, the international Episcopal Church in southern Cairo founded in 1931. The icons being exhibited range in theme from the Biblical stories in Egypt to Coptic saints. This is an exhibition that reflects the desire to see the establishment of a new Egyptian society, in the wake of the January 25 Revolution, that inherently respects and honours religious diversity. The objective of the exhibition is to encourage a better understanding of Egypt’s indigenous Christian community, the historic Coptic Orthodox Church, which constitutes up to 10% of the population and traces its heritage back to the first century. This significant indigenous Christian presence in Egypt plays a critical role in enabling all faiths to coexist in harmony.

Retablos are votive paintings that give thanks for prayers answered. This tradition came to Mexico five centuries ago with the Catholic Spanish. For two centuries retablos have been painted onto small metal sheets by neighbourhood retableros. Mexican painter Frida Kahlo had an extensive collection of retablos. Artist Alfredo Vilchis Roque picked up on this tradition of telling a simple, dramatic story with a figurative scene and written commentary. He has been painting for 20 years, and his paintings are based on stories that have been told to him.

Alfredo is a lively man, full of himself, and proud of the work he has been doing for the last 23 years, bringing history and people's stories to painted form while keeping the tradition of retablo and ex-Voto making alive. He begins work with a pencil drawing showing the basic layout - simple and not very detailed. From this he paints the final piece in oil on sheet metal called lamina.

Today his sons, Hugo Alfredo, Daniel Alonso, and Luis Angel, are following in his footsteps.They live in a working class barrio of Mexico City, and have learned the trade and tradition from their father. Their paintings have been shown, along with those of their father, in Mexico City, Paris, Miami, Chicago, and Seattle. Their family's art is the subject of two books: Infinite Gracias: Contemporary Mexican Votive Paintings, and Rue des Miracles.


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Omar Khairat - A Place In The Heart.

CARAVAN Festival of the Arts

Following on from the success of the interfaith CARAVAN Festival of the Arts held at the historic St. John’s Church in Maadi/Cairo over the last two years, a new and broader artistic CARAVAN Festival of the Arts 2011 with the theme of “My Neighbor” will open on February 3, 2011. The goal of the CARAVAN Festival of the Arts in February 2011 is to build bridges between East and West, Muslim and Christian, through the visual arts, literature, film and music. The initiative over the last two years has generated significant attention from the international media and art world, surpassing all expectations.

The CARAVAN Festival of the Arts comes out of a vision that the Arts can be one of the most effective mediums to enhance understanding and deepen respect between the Middle East and the West. Therefore the objective of this CARAVAN arts initiative is to use the Arts as a bridge for intercultural (East/West) and inter-religious (Muslim/Christian) interchange. Through this exhibition the goal is to highlight how the Arts can serve to encourage friendship and facilitate sharing between the Arab world and the West.

Opening on February 3, 2011, at 7 PM, the exhibition and festival will be officially opened by the Grand Imam of Al Azhar in Cairo, Sheikh Ahmed el Tayeb. 45 premier Middle Eastern and Western visual artists will come together for the selling exhibition which will be held inside the church, with each submitting one piece of work that reflects the theme, “My Neighbor”. As the previous years have shown, it will be an exhibition that has a diverse range of artists ranging from one of Egypt’s leading contemporary artists, Mohamed Abla, to rising star Reda Abdel Rahman, to expatriate artists Britt Boutros Ghali and Roland Prime to name but a few. Many thousands are expected to attend and there will be considerable Arab and Western media coverage.

Special participating guests to this year’s CARAVAN Festival of the Arts are Reza Aslan, the New York Times bestselling Iranian-American author (No god but God, Beyond Fundamentalism, Tablet & Pen), Khalid Abdalla, British-Egyptian film actor (star of The Kite Runner, United 93, and Green Zone with Matt Damon), and Mohammed Antar, world renowned Ney (Middle Eastern Flute) player.

“Our experience has shown,” says Rev. Canon Paul-Gordon Chandler, author and the American rector/minister of St. John’s Church and founder of the Caravan Festival of the Arts, “that art is a universal language that has the ability to dissolve the petty differences that divide us. The words of Anish Kapoor, the contemporary Indian sculptor illustrate our objective; ‘We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness.’”

In looking toward this upcoming February 2011 event, “Our desire through this third exhibition,” says Roland Prime, exhibition curator and a participating British artist, “is that we will see how much we all have in common and how we can enhance and deepen each other’s lives.”

All attendance is free of charge, but 20% of all art sales go to Middle Eastern charities assisting the poor.

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Taram - Mustafa / Moj Dragane.