Cairo's 2019 Biennale will continue till the 10th of August in "Kasr El Fenon" hall, the museum of modern art in Cairo's Opera House and in the Arts Complex in El Zamalek. Fine artists from 52 countries are taking part in the Biennale including great artists from 13 African countries.
The Biennale demonstrates the deepest human emotions and ideas, as well as showing important international issues through intensive moral art. Under the name "Nahw El Shark", the Biennale title, the artworks focused on simple materials that might seem normal and valueless to the normal viewer to embody the human intellectual value after being reformed by the artist.
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Youris Van Du Mortel, Cairo's 2019 Biennale Winner[/caption]
The Belgian Artist Youris Van Du Mortel showed this in his art piece that won the prize of "El Nile El Kobra", one of the biggest prizes between the Biennale prizes. Du Mortel succeeded in showing the sentimental state he had during his visit to Egypt by using simple materials like incense, candles, Islamic drawings, coffee.
He also used the photographs taken during his visit, copies of his personal writings and parts of his suit to express his obvious admiration to the Egyptian historical details. He formed a guitar from parts of his suit that he tore and used the incense and candles to show his European identity in a side painting that included Western designs and a beautiful lady that was covered by the torn part of the suit and other details.
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Prigitah Kovans's light designs[/caption]
The biennale also included light designs like that of Biennale prize winner the Austrian artist Prigitah Kovans who presented different forms of the same design by using three separate parts made of special layers of mirrors and glass that gave the illusion of movement as a result of the light's reflection.
The design included a glass cube with several light reflections that added a magical look to the cube and the single lamp it contained that somehow appeared to be several lamps with different shapes and sizes. And while every art piece expresses a different meaning, it also drives the viewer to medidate and try to understand the meaning behind it.
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Sadek El Fragy's video art[/caption]
On the other hand, the Iraqi Artist Sadek El Fragy showed this in his Biennale prize winner video art, in it he expressed the human life from its origin representing a man and a woman by narrating a visual story that was pided into two parts.
The first part represented a boat floating above water and never stopping and the other part demonstrated black and white cartoons showing the life journey and what it contains from marriage, reproduction, agriculture, city building,…etc. to the regression and the destruction that occur before the cycle of life is repeated again.
It's noticed that the ideas rely on the emotional depth of the viewer which may explain the absence of the public audience in the Biennale. Explanatory methods like brochures and others should have been provided to help explain the emotional depth of the artworks to the public audience.
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Contributed by: Sara Goda
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