Entitled “Light”, a new watercolour exhibition by Wael Nour opened on 16 October at Cordoba Art Gallery in Mohandsine. The 26 small to medium paintings invite the viewer to explore sources of light, both hidden and visible, through paper. The images are mostly landscapes of Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, Assiut and Esna as well as Luxor, where Nour lives with his family.
Born and raised in Assiut, Nour has always sought unusual landscapes and remote locations. A 1999 graduate of the Faculty of Art Education in Assiut, it was there that Nour met his mentor Behkeet Farrag (1939-1997), the dean of the faculty and one of Egypt’s few watercolour icons, himself a student of Shafik Rezq (1905-1989), and the first Egyptian to show watercolours at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Nour started his career by reproducing images from magazines, eventually gaining Farrag’s approval and becoming his protégé – then he began to paint from life, and eventually participating in the Spring Salon organised by the Assiut Culture Palace in 1997.
“I used to walk for miles on the outskirts of Assiut, with my tools in my backpack, stopping when I found something I wanted to depict. Sometimes I returned to the same spot with my mentor and we worked together. His sudden death was a saddening accident, a great loss, however, I am trying to keep his teachings and spirit. I haven’t given up this method until now, anyway. It is a complete joy, and it works. You see, I worked in Cairo for few years after my graduation, but I couldn’t bear the noisy overcrowded streets and decided to settle in the peaceful city of Luxor, the ancient Egyptian capital. I tried many mediums and some of my early paintings were symbolic, but I never loved anything more than watercolour, which is believed to be the most delicate medium. Luckily enough,” he adds, smiling, “watercolour is more popular than other mediums among tourists in Luxor.”
Like Farrag’s work, Nour’s is static, conservative in approach, with almost no movement. Here as in his last – fourth – exhibition, “Remarkable Moments”, held at Noun Art Gallery in Luxor, Nour shows an explorer’s interest in place, and a traveller – indeed an Orientalist’s – appetite for the grassroots. Using a camera as well as a sketchbook, he follows in the footsteps of such figures as Justave Le Gray (1820-1884), who documented streets of Cairo – mosques, old alleys and markets – though Nour’s images are more spiritual and humanistic, revealing otherwise hidden emotional movement. In “Light” this is especially impressive. “When you visit one of those historical sites in Luxor, even when you watch the slow motion of a camel herd, or just ride in a boat on the magical Nile, enjoying the sight of mountains and clusters of old houses, you instantly feel this light shining within your soul, and you feel relaxed and energised. I find great enjoyment in depicting this light,” he says.
One painting shows a man riding a donkey, with houses on different levels in the mountains in the background, in a village called Al-Kalabiya located between Esna and Idfu. Another features four camels resting against a bluish house, while a third shows a beautifully decorated blanket together with white galabiyas hanging on a clothesline tied to a window and a tree branch, stressing the aesthetic value of silence. Human figures are scarce. A painting depicting a group of middle aged men playing dominoes at a corner in an alley in Aswan is one of a few exceptions. People depicted look unhappy and old, as if they are acting in a typical black and white 1960s movie. Then again, as the painter says, “The lives of most of residents of Upper Egypt are actually very routine; chatting and playing cards or dominoes might be the only entertainment they have.”
The exhibition runs until 6 November.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 28 October, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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