For art lovers, a kinetic sculpture can be a magical artifact that takes them back to childhood toys, a world of fun and laughter. However, the sophisticated work of Emad Adel, one of Egypt’s pioneers in this genre, takes kinetic art to another level. Adel’s stunning piece, The Spinning Wheel, which was on show at this year’s General Exhibition, for example, caught the attention of numerous visitors. A few weeks later, two kinetic pieces, The Mask and The Electrocardiogram, went on show at the fourth segment of the Odyssey Gallery Summer Collection Festival, which took place in Zamalek from 21 to 31 August. They are equally amazing, handmade machineries.

Adel’s work might be described as mixed media on wood or assemblage since each piece is a collection of many small pieces. Every assembled piece he produces takes many months or years to form. It is a fusion of many forms: sculpture, collage, decoupage, miniature craft, and painting. The Spinning Wheel – dated March 2024, and sized 150 cm x 100 cm – took the artist four years to complete. It consists of four rectangular wooden boards that vary in width but have the same height. Each rectangular board, which could be seen as a separate sculpture, is given a title: Traffic Sign; Clown; Home; and The Truth. Each is divided into even smaller rooms filled with their own miniature sculptures. When you turn the handle, you see some parts moving – a kind of documentary on the history of human domestic life. The wooden board is painted green. The wheel invites the viewer to interact with it by turning the handle. Tiny and beautiful objects and figures appear with every turn.

“The Spinning Wheel tells the story of the historical relationship between man and the woven cloth, from ancient Egypt, where the first linen spinning wheels were invented, up to this moment,” Adel explained. Tiny spinning wheels reflecting different kinds developed over the centuries in Asia and Europe, as well as a tiny replica of a Singer sewing machine – a fixture of middle-class Egyptian houses through the 20th century – can all be seen. “The idea behind this piece is to examine the relationship between the development of human activity and the development of the spinning wheel and the significance of cloth in every human being’s life from the minute they are born until they die, and how the design of dresses, for example, reflects different cultures.”

Born to a modest family in Sohag, Upper Egypt, with few toy shops, the artist used to invent and manufacture his own toys. He later moved to Cairo to study art at the Faculty of Specific Education in Dokki, graduating in 1992. The artist had practised painting, graphic design and sculpture, working for many years as a graphic designer for private companies. Meanwhile, he participated in group exhibitions with photography, painting, and digital artworks. It took him 15 years from graduation to start an in-depth study of kinetic sculpture, which was his favourite genre. “As I indulged myself in the research, I found out that the roots of kinetic art date back to ancient Egypt with automata of stone and wood used in religious ceremonies,” he noted. Adel studied them along with ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman toys as well as Ismail Al-Jazari’s Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, which contains numerous fanciful designs.

“Automata is more concerned with the sophisticated composition of the artwork and miniature sculpture,” he explains, however, “while kinetic sculpture is focused on motion techniques. Fascinated by automata and kinetic masterpieces, I started with reproductions of simple popular kinetic toys from different cultures, including some famous works by Leonardo Da Vinci, especially his flying machines, all by myself in my workshop.” Over the next few years Adel’s work developed and he started reproducing complicated patterns, using mixed media and recycling. In all this time – and to this day – Adel has not thought of giving a solo exhibition. “I am against the idea of giving a solo exhibition twice or even once a year, the way most artists do, simply because my work needs a lot of patience and takes a lot of effort.”

One aspect of this is the use of mixed media. In each piece of his, he uses cloth, thread, steel, wood, paper, among other materials to create his own parallel world.  For Adel, mixed media represents a “curious connection to the whole world”. While most of his tiny objects are manufactured in his workshop, he would collect old items like clips and nails and recycle them to make them fit into his  pieces. Like other artists, some items and themes recur in his work. For example, a tiny ladder will frequently lead the viewer’s eyes from one shelf to another. In both The Spinning Wheel and The Electrocardiogram, the tiny ladder leads to two tiny nesting pigeons. “It is very nostalgic. The ladder reminds me of my grandfather’s rural house where it led to the roof. I would climb the ladder to witness the vast starry sky and observe the chickens and the birds in their cages.”

A deeply cultured artist, many of his figures are inspired by literary characters. He mentioned the Algerian novelist Ahlam Mustaghanmy’s Memory of the Flesh, which inspired the miniature beds and nude human figures hanging from the roofs in many of his pieces. Inspired by his own illness, Adel’s ECG machine is a sophisticated two-piece kinetic sculpture. The square-shaped upper part consists of many rooms, each featuring a miniature sculpture or a drawing, while the lower is rectangular, with a large clown on the top shelf. The two pieces represent the head and the body of a human. When a handle in the lower part is turned on, an ink pen moves vertically to draw a diagram on a piece of paper, mimicking the original machine. The heart is the vessel of emotions, as Adel puts it, and so turning the handle generates pictures, reveals hidden characters and tells stories. This piece was produced in 2020 during the Covid lockdown.

The Mask, dated 2018, is a less complicated but equally fantastic piece depicting a blue wooden box with a small handle fixed on two gears. When you turn the handle, six slices of a human head inside the box start to move up one after the other. Their motion recalls a popcorn machine. This amazing interactive piece, inspired by Jibran Khalil Jibran’s The Madman, refers to the constant circulation of ideas, thoughts and feelings in our heads.

On the side of the box, a beautiful painting depicting a nude woman with two wings might refer to freedom of expression.

Two other kinetic pieces will be on show at Odyssey Gallery’s fifth and last segment of the Summer Collection Festival, from 1 to 10 September. One is titled The Sea. Dated 2020, it is a three-dimensional sculpture, 25 x 26 x 21 cm, inspired by the artist’s love for scuba diving and his great admiration of the coral reefs. The piece is made of actual flotsam. Saturated with salty water, the wood, in addition to other materials such as rusty nails and copper, creates an authentic substance. “Sea life and sea ports are like an amazing orchestra, with its many voices and fascinating details. I depicted this unique spirit and its melodies in around 10 kinetic sculptures.” The artist is currently working on a huge mural kinetic sculpture, which might be an extension of his latest work, The Spinning Wheel.

Asked if simple replicas of his artworks might be made available as toys or collectibles, the artist says he used to have a small shop at the Al-Fustat market for that purpose, which did not survive financially. “The place was gradually occupied by merchants, pushing out the artisans. And I felt I was more of an artisan than a merchant.”

* A version of this article appears in print in the 5 September, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly