Egypt

Egyptian artist Wael Shawky works across film, sculpture, performance and drawing to examine and invert common notions of national and religious identity by recasting existing viewpoints of history. Characterized by rigorous research, Shawky’s practice is rooted in his deep relationship to the history and cultural heritage of the Arab world. His work premises history to be a record of subjectively depicted sequences rather than indisputable facts, which he posits to create elaborately choreographed re-stagings and interpretations of historic events. In El Araba El Madfuna (2012), children come to pay homage to an ancient archaeological city and its surrounding mythologies, while in Cabaret Crusades (2013) medieval clashes between Muslims and Christians become a Homeric trilogy retold from an Arab perspective. In his new musical film for the Egyptian Pavilion, Drama 1882, Shawky continues his ongoing practice of historical renditions. Taking the year 1882, and Egypt’s seminal Urabi revolution (1879–1882) against imperial rule as a starting point, the epic musical staging recasts the narrative lens on the dramatic sequence of events that began with a café fight, erupted into riots, and ended in a full- scale bombardment of Alexandria by British forces and the historic Battle of Tel El Kebir.