The Arrival of Barbarians (1 February-6 March), the latest exhibition by the well established artist Omar Elfayoumi, held at the newly inaugurated Zahwa Gallery in Downtown, included more than 50 acrylic on canvas paintings in different sizes. It marks a different stage in Elfayoumi’s long and rich career.
The collection, mostly executed in 2024, depicts the evil pervading contemporary life and politics in general and the merciless war on Gaza in particular. It involves figures drowning in blood, devoured by the Barbarians. Inspired by C P Cavafy’s famous 1904 poem “Waiting for the Barbarians”, it first gave rise to a large painting titled The Barbarians Are Coming in 2023, shown in the 44th General Exhibition.
“Unlike Cavafy, I believe the Barbarians have already arrived and are controlling our lives,” the artist told me at the gallery. Barbarians, he says, are people driven by “the desire to control, injustice, killing and all negative attitudes and evil actions... The 2011 revolution gave me ideas about the spread of evil in our lives... Another poem by the legendary poet Salah Abdelsabor that predicted a more scary world coming also inspired me.” Elfayoumi went on to cite the vernacular poet Fouad Haddad’s line: “People are eating each other, I will not eat.” Poetry is one of his principal sources. “I would say that I am a good reader. I read fast. I used to write poetry and short stories when I was a young man, but painting took over.”
Born in 1957 in Cairo, Elfayoumi, graduated from the mural painting department at the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1981, and has been an active figure in the art scene in Egypt ever since, providing art lovers with authentic figurative work that reflects the original spirit of Egypt, especially portraits of the people in the streets and cafe culture.
For this collection, new items have invaded the canvases: black crows, frogs and snakes. Colorful evil fish fly in the sky, and snakes can be seen everywhere. Almost all human figures depicted are male. The prevailing colours are red, blue and black. In the corridor leading to the two exhibition halls, two medium size portraits titled “We Have Arrived” depict a pain of men with evil features, one boldly holding a snake in his fist. “At the Cafe” is a series of paintings including one of a snake twisting on the chair’s arm while a group of evil people are intimately chatting.
Another medium sized painting titled The Boss 1 is a close shot of a man with a serious, chubby face wearing a neat shirt and a red tie. The Boss 2 shows a male figure wearing a suit and the same red tie, raising his finger as if giving orders to unseen employees while sitting on a chair that rests on the clouds, surrounded by the roofs of high buildings. “Generally, the boss in most institutions is associated with the desire to control his employees,” Elfayoumi explained. In the corner, a small portrait of a man with two horns and one eye sitting on a chair, leaning forward as if planning a crime provides a different variation, under the title It Has Been Decided.
The Barbarians’ Arrival 1 is a huge painting featuring a group of Barbarians in the upper two thirds of the canvas, laughing and celebrating their arrival with snakes around their necks and crows flying over their hands, while the bottom third is filled with innocent people drowning in layers of blood. This division of the scene helps to stress that the Barbarians have full control over ordinary people; it is repeated in a smaller painting titled Reflection.
A 100 x 80 cm portrait, which might be a self-portrait of the artist, is titled Staying Sane. It depicts the face of a man meditating or simply in a state of confusion. It is one of a series of four portraits bearing the same title. I Will Convince You, on the other hand, features a portrait from 2017 of a man with two horns, visibly manipulating someone unseen.
Elfayoumi’s project focuses on Egyptian oriental cafes, traditional homes and portraits. This time the theme is totally different, however, with the artist redeploying his famous figures and landmark settings brilliantly, turning familiar scenes into a provocative ones. “I used the cafes here to express how evil has become so close... I actually started to change my lifestyle. I don’t spend time at cafes regularly like before. As I listened to stories about the organ trade and domestic violence, I became increasingly worried even walking in the street. If you look at the human figures depicted in this collection more carefully, you will notice that evil people do not look so different from other normal figures. And this is one of the fatal catastrophes, not being able to tell the difference between good and evil people.” Yet the impact of the arrival of Barbarians is evident on normal people depicted in a state of shock.
A series of small paintings is entitled I Can’t Scream features single portraits of victims terrified by the arrival of Barbarians who nonetheless lack the power to even scream. “Widespread positive values like kindness and freedom have started to vanish,” Elfayoumi added sadly. “The superpowers have increasingly imposed double standards and inhumane policies on developing countries. And as it gets worse, I find it necessary to work more on the same theme. I still have ideas to explore related to this project. Anyway, working on this collection was useful psychologically. It helped me to vent my anger.”
* A version of this article appears in print in the 13 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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