Winner of the Schering Foundation Art Award 2011, Wael Shawky’s first institutional survey at Berlin’s KW Institute for Contemporary Art is a great opportunity to get acquainted with the prolific young artist’s body of work.
The main hall at KW has been filled with 150 tons of sand for the installation surrounding the new video work, El Araba El Madfuna, named after a town built on the ancient Egyptian city of Abydos, home to the Osirion and Pharaohnic temple of Seti. In the deep of the night, muffled hammering and throbbing is heard all across the town, whose residents illegally burrow in the excavations under the moonlight, looking for archaeological finds. Driven entirely by financial needs and often without much knowledge of ancient Egypt and the Pharaohs, sorcerers are often counselled to predict where valuable founds can be made. The film is enacted by children, who, following the auguries of a prophet, discover a hole in the ground where they start digging. Shawky interweaves the town’s tale with a short story by Twentieth Century author Mohamed Mustagab; a surreal narrative about a holy man on his deathbed, his last words eagerly anticipated by the townsmen.
Shawky’s poetic video works are based on historic events, often told through perspectives relating to an Arab voice and staged with child actors, digital animation and marionettes. His epic trilogy Cabaret Crusades (on view in part here, and at dOCUMENTA 13) re-enacts the siege of Jerusalem in 1099 and the subsequent shifts in power in the region. Shawky interweaves myths, facts and fiction in his renderings, using elaborate music, text, costumes and clay puppets – all hand made by the artist and on view on the second floor at KW – to call forth a questioning of ossified views of history and expose belief-systems at the heart of contemporary historiography. With the current political unrest in the Middle East, a rethinking of the region’s past may be as relevant as never before.
Wael Shawky
Al Araba Al Madfuna
Ernst Schering Foundation Art Award 2011
August 26 until October 21, 2012
www.kw-berlin.de