This year, the 44th round of the Ministry of Culture’s General Exhibition (11 June-31 July) seems to be different. With the prominent calligrapher Sameh Ismail as its new general commissar and curator, new galleries have been added to raise the number of participating artists. The exhibition, inaugurated on 11 June by former minister of culture Neveen El- Kilany and Chairman of the Plastic Arts Sector (PAS) Walid Qanoush, features the work of over 300 artists at the Palace of Arts, the Mahmoud Mokhtar Museum, and three spaces on the Opera House grounds: Al-Hanager, the Al-Bab Gallery and the Salah Taher Gallery.

In previous rounds the selection policy was chaotic, leading to quantity at the expense of quality, but in the present round the increase from 220 artists in 2020 is actually matched by an improvement in overall quality. This impression is confirmed by a more critical reception. My own biggest issue was timing: this was the hottest time of the year, and many art lovers were on the beach for the duration of the exhibition. On my second visit to the Opera House, Al-Hanager had no air conditioning and the Salah Taher Gallery was closed. There was also practically no publicity to promote the event. More importantly, most of the exhibits had been previously seen at private galleries. A notable improvement this year is more coherent presentation, with part of the Palace of Arts’ ground floor dedicated to painting and collage on cloth by woman artists – Aliaa Elgredey, Maha George, and Neama El-Sanhoury – accompanied by a text written by Ismail, “Textile of Hope”.

Calligraphy and calligraphy-inspired work was allocated to Al-Bab Gallery, and that included the late Hazem El-Mistikawy’s unique calligraphic sculptures.

Most of the work was, as usual, at the Palace of Arts. The Advent of Barbarians by Omar El-Fayoumy, a 139 x 204 mixed media on canvas, is a reflection on the Gaza genocide featuring big-eared, snake-draped men with black birds in their hands. In the background are delicate houses against an ominous, reddish sky where fish float. Abdel-Wahab Abdel-Mohsen too paints black birds in two large, square acrylic on canvas landscapes.

There were fewer sculptures and photographs than paintings. Sculptor Ahmed Abdel-Fattah offers a bronze male nude standing submissively, the upper part of him framed to cover up his genitals. Abdalla Sabry’s series of photographs Essence depicts a catfish which, though cut up, looks alive. Karim Nabil’s diptych He Is There For You Wherever You Go shows a woman in a loose dress holding a Quran and a man in black garment with a wreath around his head, each in deserted surroundings. Ahmed Mohsen Mandour’s diptych is made up of a cracked egg and a man’s face smeared with yolk.

Portraits by Mai Heshmat, Fairuz Samir, Essam Taha and others show women in revealing moments. Ahmed Abdel-Fattah’s Moments of Transformation, for example, shows a woman lying on her back on a bed with her legs leaning on the wall.

The impact of the war on Gaza is also evident in Ayman Lotfy’s conceptual project, The Arena, an installation with photography, and video art that revolves around the theme of a chess board where heads of state might resolve their conflicts by wrestling. It reflects on the inefficacy of the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice and other arms of the so called international community, which remain unable to stop the genocide in Gaza. Another installation by Samah Hamdy has a small room surrounded by black metal bars with a projector showing scenes from when she locked herself in a cage at the Friday market in Sayeda Aisha, filmed using a hidden camera. In those scenes people, mostly men, stop to ask why she is there and whether she needs help or food. Spending time in the room, you relived the artist’s experience and the sense of imprisonment. In The Cage (2015), Hamdy locked herself in one of the cages at the zoo. It’s a feeling she says she often has: that she is caged, restricted. At the end of her performance piece, the artist ended up spending five days in jail, validating the whole experience in a new way.

For the first time in the history of the General Exhibition, Ismail introduced meet-the-artist sessions with ten prominent figures including Salah El-Meligy, Abdel-Wahab Abdel-Mohsen, Reda Abdel-Salam and (the only woman artist) Zeinab Salem. Moderated by Ismail, Mohamed Orabi’s session proved deeply inspiring. A one-hour talk was followed by questions from the audience: fellow artists, students and critics. Orabi is the founder of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Luxor University, and he talked about his artistic and spiritual journey from Sohag, his birthplace, to Cairo, the United States, and back to Minya, where he worked as an assistant professor before moving onto Luxor. Orabi’s paintings in oil pastel and other media, reproductions of which were projected, testified to the artist’s passion for the traditions in Upper Egypt.

In the last week of the big event, which closed on 31 July, included, for the first time, a mini art book fair of volumes published by the Ministry of Culture, and a two-day conference on copyrights and art marketing, in addition to a special session to evaluate the achievements and the shortcomings of this round.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 1 August, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly