Art Student Expresses Women's Struggles in Sculpted Statue

By:  Sara Goda

The graduation projects of the Art Students this year has been recognized widely specially on the social media where many people expressed their utter admiration and love to the artworks.

It included the works of Mohamed Nageh, the 24 year old Fine Arts student who has always wanted to study Art.

"It was my dream ever since I was a child." Said Nageh.

Fortunately, his dream came true and he enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts, El Menia University.

Nageh succeeded in showing his immense talent through his graduation project.

The students were given the ultimate freedom in choosing the ideas and the materials for their projects and thus, Nageh chose to show his admiration to women and their strength through his clay sculpture. Over the course of only 19 days, Nageh worked on finishing his sculpture.

The project is a 270 cm tall clay sculpture of a woman's body with a parrot on her shoulder. Nageh modulated the body and changed some of the form ratios to clarify his idea. He used an abstract style but with a meaningful indication behind every single detail.

For example, the woman's hand is over her heart since the woman is the heart of the society while the other hand is outstretched and pointing to the future with whatever it may hold from hardships and struggles.

There is a strong inclination of the head towards the body which indicates the problems women face and one of her legs is raised off the ground to show that women always find a way to overcome problems, struggles and hardships.

Even the parrot on the woman's shoulder is bowing in the same direction of the woman's head to express its involvement in her struggles and low spirits despite the fact that parrots are known to be joyful and delightful birds.

It is an established fact that women are one of the strongest and most beautiful creatures to ever exist and the talented sculptor expressed this fact successfully in his project.

Nageh earned a grade of B+ in the final evaluation of his project. Also, some of the professors suggested that Nageh covers his sculpture with a breakable material like polyester to preserve it seeing as clay has the tendency to crack and break when it dries but Nageh refused due to the high cost of the proccess and also because the statue has to stay in the faculty for two years if covered.

Nageh added that he admires and looks up to the Great Egyptian Sculptor AbdEl Hadi El Weshahy and Mahmoud Mokhtar. He also hopes that one day Fine Art will be given the attention and admiration it deserves in Egypt to improve the artistic image of Egypt.

At the end, Nageh wanted to thank D. Michael Zaki and Engineer. Ahmed Abdel Fattah for their constant support to him and his friends and colleagues while he was undertaking the prroject.

Related :

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-feminist-movement-in-art-3528959