Headlines today are dominated wars between East and West, and conflicts between countrymen. All too often, negotiations fail to make progress: Officials may be shaking hands, but behind their backs their constituents are still shaking their fists. And we’re all left to shake our heads and wonder: Is the gap too wide?

To one pastor and a special group of artists, it’s not so much a question of a gap as it is an issue of communication. And art, they believe, is not just an alternative form of communication — it is a journey that people of different cultures and faiths can take together. To prove it, 20 Egyptian and foreign artists, all based in Egyptian, held a collective exhibition called On a Caravan: East and West Journeying Together Through the Arts.

Each artist produced two thematic paintings, the first depicting of Maadi’s Church of St. John the Baptist, which hosted the exhibition. The second work reflected East-West and Christian-Muslim friendship.

The exhibition ran for a week in early February. The artwork has since been taken down, but Reverend Paul-Gordon Chandler, rector of the church and the curator of On a Caravan, tells Egypt Today that the impact is still being felt. Edited excerpts:

At Saint John, there has been always an emphasis on how faith could be deepened through the broad spectrum of the arts, music, literature as well as visual art. When 9/11 happened, the Anglican Church was actually in the middle of conversations with Al-Azhar. As a result, there was an agreement of interfaith dialogue to build mutual respect between Muslims and Christians and also beyond religion — intercultural between East and West. Even inside our church, the two big, round windows were designed by Al-Azhar’s own stained glass artist who made them similar to Cairo’s main mosques in an Arabesque style with the sign of the cross. For the other windows, we hired an American Christian artist who collaborated with Egyptian Muslim fabricators to redraw the stories of Prophets like Ibrahim, Moses, Joseph related to Egypt in the Bible and the Qur’an. We then organized an opening to which we invited key sheikhs and imams.

Khaled Habib “Faith is a divine mosaic in which each little piece is a different expression of culture and religion,” says Reverend Paul-Gordon Chandler.

Then we thought of doing another event on a broader scale by starting a small association called Caravan: East and West Journeying Together Through the Arts. We wanted to launch its activities through this On a Caravan exhibition, representing the catalyst of five years of continuous efforts.

I think our days call for a whole new kind of movement: one that builds on what we hold in common. In some ways, such discords and conflicts have their roots historically related to misinterpretation of religious beliefs. I think if religion was the source or the cause, it can be the source of the solution. If we specifically go to the core of our faith as Muslims and Christians, and we truly read our own scriptures, as they are meant to be read, we can find common tutoring of love, forgiveness and non-violence.

When people look upon their own faith there should be a respect for the other and an embrace of anything that comes from God. It is a process of mutual learning to spiritually enhance our life journey from other people’s own experiences. Faith is a divine mosaic in which each little piece is a different expression of culture and religion. Only when all these pieces are put together do we get the fullest display of what God originally intended for lives.

I think that art is a wellspring of the spiritual journey, which can serve to build this much-needed bridge between religions and cultures and, moreover, it should cause violence to be set aside, as Leo Tolstoy once put it. The aim of this exhibition is to explore through the media of painting and printmaking, the dialogue between East and West. Each of our 20 artists have produced two pieces of work on ideas that reflect the collective theme between Muslims and Christians, between the Middle East and the Western world with an emphasis on narrowing the gaps between the two entities. The church as a physical building also became an inspiration for their artistic expressions reflecting peace, harmony, compassion, forgiveness, love and understanding.

I think we had two kinds of visitors: some were religiously oriented and looked to paintings made by our Muslim brothers and realized that we can learn from the other. For those who were not religious, art can be a way to enhance their understanding. A lot of the exhibited paintings have obvious spiritual depth, which touched people.

The exhibition has also reached media from all around the world, so we had visiting writers such as Michael Slackman from the New York Times and some prolific religious figures representing international churches in Cairo and many interfaith communities. We had invited Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury as well as Dr. Aly Gomaa, the Grand Mufti of Egypt.

But what really interested me is not quite interfaith dialogue, which is the trend nowadays, but interfaith friendships that have started on a small scale between Egyptian and foreign artists of the exhibition. The first times we gathered, they started to exchange email addresses and phone numbers and this is a miniature of what we aim to happen between Easterners and Westerners on larger scale.

Courtesy On a Caravan Relationship between East and West by artist Reda Abdel Rahman

One thing we started at Saint John is the Abraham Center where we try to build not only East and West relations, but also East and East as well. This happens in the context of the relations between Egyptian Copts and Muslims where they gather under the same tent and they can learn from their own spiritual experience by talking about a common theme like prayer and what it means for them. Everyone can learn and share, but never critique, debate or argue. So, both Christians and Muslims start to discover the closeness and the similarity of their origins.

There is an educational component where we try to break all the stereotypical ideas through seminars that teach Christians about Muslims. We try to screen films about Islam in what we call Interfaith Film Nights.

Yes, we were encouraged with the exhibition’s outcome. To our surprise, approximately 600 people attended the opening night reception and within the week that the exhibition was open, we had over 1,300 people come to view the artwork — Muslims, Christians, Arabs and Westerners. This was beyond anything we expected, and it seemed to indicate a profound interest in this idea of using art as a bridge for intercultural and inter-religious dialogue in particular linking the Middle East and West.

Courtesy On a Caravan The Journey by artist Maher Ali

I was personally very impressed with the artwork of the participating artists. We had a great range of styles — modern, contemporary, impressionistic, abstract, installation, traditional, realism, naïve — as each artist expressed in the medium and style they felt most represented them. This resulted in the show having tremendous variety.

I also think that because the exhibition was held in this beautiful little church, in a space dedicated for prayer and the spiritual journey, this added a sense of depth and reflection to it, providing a contemplative dimension to the experience. I had numerous people expressing this sentiment to me, regardless of whether they were Muslim or Christian.

We want the friendships that have developed between the artists to be a microcosm of what could happen at a wider lever.

For example, I recall the first dinner evening we had together, held in one of Maadi’s beautiful old villas with all the participant artists in attendance. Many did not know each other previously, but they began to talk to each other, the common ground being art, all sharing a visual language. It was inspirational to see them exchanging ideas and thoughts about what could be done. And as each shared briefly about themselves and their work, it became apparent that we were starting something quite special and that feeling was reflected by the artists’ passion and belief in what we were attempting to do through this initiative. Throughout the project, the artists drew inspiration from each other.

Courtesy On a Caravan French painter Anne du Boistesselin

And I think this represents what we think can and should happen on a larger scale. In the midst of the increasing chasm of discord and misunderstanding between East and West, I think our day calls for a whole new kind of movement, not of doctrine or even of religious unity, but one that builds on what we hold in common: a movement that is an all-out effort to help the other, with goodwill, appreciation and love. Fundamentally, we need to allow ourselves to learn from each other.

From the outset of this artistic initiative, our vision was that this would be the beginning of new artistic initiatives to expand intercultural and inter-religious dialogue between the Middle East and West. I believe profoundly in that statement by Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, in his book What is Art?; “The task of art is enormous Art should cause violence to be set aside. And it is only art that can accomplish this.” The main goal of the On a Caravan exhibition was to highlight that the arts serve as one of the most effective mediums to build bridges of friendship and sharing between East and West. And so we hope that this exhibition will be a catalyst toward starting an informal movement that does just this.

We are still in the midst of evaluating this last exhibition and planning for the future. But we certainly have many creative plans of using the arts to connect East and West, building on what we all hold in common, and proactively finding ways through the arts to wage peace on the other.

Artists on the Caravan

Although the artists came from different backgrounds, they all expressed their enthusiasm at being able to share the common language of art with their counterparts across the cultures.

One of exhibition’s organizers and participating artists was Roland Prime, a British artist who has been living in Cairo for five years. He, Chandler and Egyptian artist Mohamed Abla came up with a list of the participating artists, which included nine Egyptian and nine foreign artists.

Prime feels that the exhibition has fulfilled Chandler’s goal to organize an event that explores and crosses the boundaries of Eastern and Western practices.

“Being one of the co-facilitators, along with Mohamed Abla, put me in a good position to see how the artists all worked in their own studio spaces, as we went to visit almost every one of them,” says Prime. “This made me admire and love what we were all here to do, and that was to produce art. Each artist we visited was very welcoming and hospitable.

“I think that this was an unusual experience for all of us, as we had to think very hard about the content of the work and what it would portray. The Caravan is moving on and perhaps, so is my understanding of others. Even though the exhibition succeeded and all the artists got along, regardless of their faith, we still have a very long way to go, if we want achieve mutual respect and understanding on a much wider scale.”

Abla, married to an Austrian Christian, thinks that the project is just the beginning of a series of similar projects. “Art was the common language that was much more effective than any verbal way of communication because of its wide reach to all people. Looking at the exhibited paintings: You wouldn’t be able to say who the painter was, whether he or she was Egyptian or non-Egyptian, Muslim or Coptic.”

British Julie Oxenforth moved to Egypt in 2007. “My painting Under the Bridge, shows an Eastern man holding a Western woman. I tried to explore the existing tension between the opposite parties and to blur the boundaries,” she says. “I think that some people may identify with this, while others may not. Art gave me an alternative way of communicating and forming a closer connection with Egyptians, different from the usual consumer/supplier relationship between foreigner and local.”

French painter Anne du Boistesselin has been living in downtown Cairo for eight years. “I called my paintings Ex-Voto, referring to objects placed in churches as a gratitude for fulfilled vows,” Boistesselin says. “Working on the same theme in a group exhibition is a principle that foresees the different techniques that each artist uses to reflect their cultural, social and personal individuality. We can then view each one’s researches, with our religious, social and artistic differences. This exhibition is an opportunity to know how Egyptian artists view and practice contemporary art, especially those who did not receive their visual education in the West and whose overall vision of contemporary art started via the internet. I now could see how they relate to the achievements and to the shortcomings and how they decide to stand side by side with foreign artists.”

While On a Caravan’s physical exhibition is now over, people can still view the digital display of the 36 artworks on the project’s website, www.oncaravan.org.  et