The Alexandria Biennale celebrates its silver anniversary this month with the return of a native son. Renowned papermaker and artist Mohamed Abou El Naga turns his attention to the local contemporary art scene as curator for the 2010 edition.

Born in Tanta, Abou El Naga put his artistic roots down in the city on the Mediterranean, earning his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. from Alexandria University. His colorful 20-year career has taken him around Europe, the US and Japan for numerous exhibitions, and kept him busy as teaching art at Cairo University and the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and the Higher Institute of Applied Arts.

He also created El-Nafeza Foundation for Contemporary Art and Development to teach rural villagers how to make paper and artwork from agricultural waste. The initiative, which earned Abou El Naga a fellowship with international social development organization Ashoka, reduces air pollution caused by burning agriculture waste and gives the villagers new sources of income.

His teaching and travels have kept him out of local galleries for some three years, but this month he returns to Egypt’s contemporary art scene with a one-two punch. As a contributor to the biennale, Abou El Naga draws on an extensive body of work and experience in a variety of mediums, from papermaking learned in Japan under pioneering Japanese artist Kyoko Ibe to exploring non-traditional printing methods as an assistant professor at Cairo University.

In addition, he is opening Holy Feet, his first local solo exhibition in years, at Alexandria’s Goethe Institute from December 9-31.

Egypt Today sat down with Abou El Naga to discuss his bold ideas for the Alexandria Biennale and his thoughts on his return to the world of contemporary Egyptian art. Edited excerpts:

Courtesy Mohamed Abou El Naga Abou El Naga returns to the gallery scene with his exhibition Holy Feet.

We are trying to rejuvenate the Alexandria Biennale through several approaches. Alexandria is historically a cultural hub of the Mediterranean region, and Egypt’s heritage as a leader in the Arab arts contributes to this. To represent this history and diversity, we are trying to balance different technologies to convey an array of ideas, approaches and mediums of expression in one show.

But, with a smaller budget compared to the Venice and Dakar biennales, for instance, we face a lot of financial difficulties. The Alexandria show is financed solely by the Egyptian government. From now on, we would like the biennale to be supported by international entities, so we can truly turn it into a platform for cultural and artistic expression.

The local contemporary art movement really started in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries when Westerners in Egypt began teaching visual art in local schools and colleges. Western trends such as impressionism and realism were absorbed by Egyptian artists and scholars, whose mission became to “Egyptianize” artistic creativity.

At that time, Egyptian society was moving towards political independence, and Egyptian artists sought their own intellectual independence. During the 1952 Revolution, Egyptian contemporary art incorporated the political discourse of Arab nationalism and began to search for identity in old heritages, whether Islamic or ancient Egyptian.

In the following decades, local contemporary art featured more personal exploration and self-discovery, including exposure to events in the West, the Far East and Africa. Recently, these new generations of artists have started to travel around the world for collaborative projects and developed new methods, different technologies, and different perspectives and ways of expressing themselves.

As such, Egyptian art has been able to open up and develop in quality in various forums around the world.

Through the selection of particular artists, curators, art managers and lecturers, I tried to answer questions about the future of art and life through a program I titled Aftermath.

Recent biennales in Alexandria have been very weak due to a lack of quality in their artwork. However, they started strong in 1954 under President Gamal Abdel Nasser, so we tried to revive the spirit of the 1954 Biennale in an effort to put our exhibition on the global art map again. We did this by collaborating with the Ministry of Culture’s Sector of Fine Arts, headed by Mohsen Shaalan, and assigning a curator to create the concept and select artists and guests without governmental interference.

In this way, this year’s biennale is a reflection of Egypt’s contemporary art and the rest of the world.

It was a question of time management. I am currently an assistant professor at the Faculty of Specific Education in Cairo University where I teach painting using non-traditional techniques that integrate different materials with various imaging and printing methods. I also try to further my career as an artist who incorporates many techniques. I am very driven to use raw, environmentally friendly and recycled material because I believe it is a way of an aesthetic re-thinking that allows me to see objects from new perspectives.

Between teaching and practicing art, I believe in the responsibility of the artist towards his society. That’s why I am continuing my social development work through El Nafeza Foundation, which I started with my wife in 2002.

In the same context, I participated at the conference of TransCultural Exchange, held in Boston last May. Two years ago, I was also named by Newsweek as one of 100 entrepreneurs who can change the world and a Goodwill Cultural Ambassador for Africa.

It comes from my childhood visits with my mother to Al-Sayyid Al-Badawi Mosque in my hometown of Tanta to recite Surat Al-Fatiha and to stand before the Footprints of the Prophet (PBUH) imprinted in stone. The Footprints had a major force to it, an eeriness. Often I stood before it as a child praying and touching it with the crowds asking for barakah (blessings).

When I joined the Faculty of Fine Arts, I studied anatomy and dissected the Footprints for its importance and holiness. I started to compare the human feet with the footprints on the stone, questioning its authenticity. One day I read an article by Youssef Idris in which he appealed to the Sheikh of Al-Azhar to remove the stone from the mosque because it was a fake by a particularly ungifted sculptor.

I was shocked. To whom had I been speaking? To whom was I revealing my thoughts and secrets throughout my childhood years? Even today, I watch ordinary people visit the mosque and touch the stone. This was how the influence for Holy Feet began. et

Alexandria Biennale December 17 – Jan 31 Ministry of Culture Sector of Fine Arts Tel: +202 3748-2142/3, 3336-4955 or (011) 416-0716 Email: alexandriabiennial@yahoo.com www.alexbiennale.gov.eg Biennale exhibits are at:

Alexandria National Museum 10 Horreya Street, Alexandria

Alexandria Atelier 6 Victor Bassili Street, Al Pharaana - Al Azarita, Alexandria Tel: 002 03 486-0526 info@atelieralex.com www.atelieralex.com

Holy Feet exhibition Dec 9 –31 Goethe Institute 10 Ptolemous Street, Azarita, Alexandria E-mail: gialex@internetalex.com