Fenenin El-Rahhal
Nomadic Artists

  
     

A Working Artists’ Summit in the Western Desert of Egypt, 2006

  
 

Mission Statement
Project Description
Expected Outcome
Program/Schedule
Participants
Practical Information
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Forum
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A project initiated and administered by Lara Baladi

Of Contemporary Nomads and the Secret Lives of Deserts
While it has no borders but the limit of sight, the desert has always been a crossroads, a space for intersections, encounters and meetings. Deserts have hosted trade routes, travel roads between northern and southern Africa, Africa and Europe. During the heyday of the Timbuktu University (16th century), the desert was a central reference for African scholars in their journeys for exchange of knowledge and intellectual enrichment.
In these times, where questions of identity and territoriality have become salient tropes, and "Otherness" construed as a foreboding threat rather than life-affirming difference, it seems important to hail and celebrate the virtues of discovery, exchange and understanding. The life of the contemporary artist has become nomadic, it emblematizes the spirit of the nomad, long lapsed everywhere else. She or he travels the world to exhibit their work, participate in workshops or conduct research.
The gathering of some thirty beings to participate in a experience more focused on process than accomplishment, aims precisely at rebuilding what binds human beings alike all the while surfacing, without qualm or fear, what makes human beings unalike. When unlikeness, or difference, is accepted as a gift, dialogue can start. In my opinion, it is of utmost importance that such a dialogue be fostered at this present moment in the region. The Middle East is as old as the notion of civilization, a fact rarely remembered, and I am joyed at participating in this caravan.

Simon N’Jami
Curator
 

Project Description

Fenenin El-Rahhal is a working artists’ summit that will bring together African and international artists, from diverse cultural backgrounds to form a "creative caravan", share an experience of nomadic journeying in the western desert of Egypt.

The program for the caravan will be elaborated in conversations amongst the artists, but the itinerary plans for seven days in the desert and four days in Cairo. The proposed dates aim to overlap the stay in Cairo with the opening of the 2006 Biennial of Art, so as to expand the scope of engagement and introduce participants to the Egyptian art scene.

The idea for the project was initiated in Tokyo on the occasion of the 4th opening of the major touring exhibition, Africa Remix. It was born from a shared desire amongst Africa Remix chief curator, Simon N’jami and artists to create a new venue for the creative encounters between artists.

In Egypt, since the invention of photography, the desert has been associated with representations of the country, through images of Bedouins and landscapes by Orientalist photographers. On the one hand, the western Egyptian desert has a rich, but forgotten, history of being the crossroads of intellectual and cultural exchange between the Middle East and Africa –itself a forgotten continent. On the other hand, since the travels of Orientalist photographers, the desert has not been a site for creative initiatives.

Fenenin El-Rahhal’s creative caravan, a fleeting utopia, will move during seven days in ever-changing desert landscapes. The desert, as purportedly, a non-political place will be the recipient and the neutral stage for the group/tribe’s to interact, unfold and share their multi-cultural ‘luggage’.

This expedition will act as the mirror of the nomadic nature of its multicultural participants and the world’s perpetual change and mobility -especially in Africa where it is one of the great economic issues addressed today by international humanitarian non profit organizations.
 

Objectives:

The objectives of the working artists’ summit, Fenenin El-Rahhal , are:

  • To reflect on notions of “territory” in light of the current political situation in the Middle East and the world, while engaged in a nomadic journey in the a-cultural and visibly boundless space of the desert;
        
  • To convene artists, curators, writers, creative practitioners, guided by Bedouins from the Baharyia oasis, for the length of seven days in the Egyptian Western desert;
        
  • To establish an experimental platform for discussions, interviews, texts, performances and other types of creative works;
        
  • To encourage local, regional, African and international encounters under the framework of dialogue, collaborative engagement and creative production in alternative spaces and situations or conditions;
        
  • To strengthen networks and nurture opportunities that bring together artists from the region and beyond, as well as introduce Cairo’s contemporary art scene to African and international artists.

 

Web Site

The virtual web space, like the desert, is a realm that seems like a boundless and unbound space for transactions and passage.
Participants are invited to join the caravan on the website during the three months preceding the expedition. Their encounter in the desert is in continuity with their encounter in cyber space.

Fenenin El-Rahhal’s web site’s forum is intended as an open space for the exchange ideas, travel notes, dialogue. Invited participants are encouraged to develop together ideas for the program of the seven days in the desert.
It is a not only a preparatory space where the project’s brainstorming begins but also a platform for on going discussion, a multicultural virtual forum for Fenenin El-Rahhal to expand beyond the dates of the expedition.

 

Africa Remix

Africa Remix chief curated by Simon N’jami, is an exhibition, which gathers more then 60 artists living in and outside of Africa.

It was first shown at the Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf in 2004 and continues to tour major museums around the world, Hayward gallery, London, Centre George Pompidou, Paris, 2005, Mori Museum, Tokyo, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2006 and Johannesburg’s Art Gallery, 2007.

So far, Africa Remix has acted as a catalyst for artists in the show, each with his or her individual experience of Africa. It has been an opportunity for them to develop their professional network inside and outside the exhibition frame.

However, although presenting only African artists, Africa Remix, besides Johannesburg, will not be touring any other city on the African continent due to lack of museum spaces and lack of financial support from institutions or African governments.

These African artists would not fully profit from the outcome of Africa Remix should this unprecedented exhibition remain one more major cultural event aimed only at a western or westernized public.

Therefore, Fenenin El-Rahhal also aims to take on the momentum of the international success of Africa Remix by offering the opportunity to some of its artists to be introduced to Egypt’s extensively growing contemporary art scene and present themselves, their works and their experience of Africa Remix.

Hopefully, Fenenin El-Rahhal could be the first of a series of similar collaborative projects initiated on the African continent.