AN ALEXANDRIAN TRIO

Al-Ahram Weekly

Jan 14 2010
Egypt

They simulate waves but what do waves correspond to, asks Gamal Nkrumah

Alfons Louis, Said Badr and Sarkis Tossoonian wandered wistfully
into Safar Khan with an extraordinary milieu of connected memories
— all of their seaside city. Alexandria was always as secular as it
was sacred. Above all, the three artists evoke Alexandria in August,
with a hint of October. Strange, since we are in midwinter. As if
worn away by weather, these works recall a bygone age.

In this climate the arts, whether religious or irreverent,
flourished uneasily side by side, narrating a compelling story about
a theology-obsessed schizophrenic cosmopolitanism. A Coptic Christian,
a Muslim and an ethnic Armenian, Louis, Badr and Tossoonian express the
aesthetic of Alexandria in their respective personal fashions. They
delve into such multi- layered and elusive meanings of the city’s
historical cultural outpourings and confront the issue of urban
multi-identities from radically different perspectives, using distinct
mediums and notions of self-expression. Their exhibition highlights
their Alexandrian roots, but in a manner not immediately perceptible.

Alexandria is honeycombed with catacombs, cisterns and underground
chambers, and the curiously attractive works of Louis look like
something snatched out of the dungeons beneath the city, except that
they are recovered from the depths of the sea like some denizens of
the deep.

Sun drenched scratched surfaces with fairy-tale hares and gazelles
prancing past Coptic-like iconic figures look like they have been
hollowed out of some ancient rock, or dug out of the crypt of some
long deceased Alexandrian Greek nobles, with scattered pieces of
potsherds and pockmarked sea salvaged timber. Inscriptions are scarce,
but Pharaonic oddments are in abundance.

The Copt tells the tale of his extraordinary seaside hometown in
unpretentious, carefully weighed logs siphoned from the Mediterranean.

Expect to see no rudimentary paintings of the sea. However, he pulls
no punches when he tells the story of his many-layered port city. His
works are a carefully crafted recreation of Alexandria, but without
the glamour. There is something about his work that ultimately evades
interpretation. His icons give the impression of being hauled up some
secret shaft down which the mortal remains of individuals long gone
have been deposited in the Netherworld. Yet there is something bright
and cheery about these works built of planks.

Rain-sodden scenes are tangible only in the rough texture of the
stylistically hewn damp wood. The fragments of metal scattered
here and there re-enforce the sodden lot. There is something almost
imperceptible that gives the impression of dankness even though there
isn’t a trace of moisture.

Images of a cosmopolitan Alexandria have long since faded. Instead the
trio treat visitors to the exhibition to a miscellaneous collection
of hypnotically powerful works with a classical quality evocative of
this particular Mediterranean port city’s past.

However, the Alexandrian threesome offer an enticing hint of the
city’s original magnificence, and of a darker aspect of its doctrinal
sophistication. Was not the newly converted Christian Alexandria
that cruelly culled its pagans — including the philosopher-sorceress
Hepatia? She was after all a mere mathematician who happened to infuse
her students with a vitality and warmth that none of her contemporaries
matched. For this, she had to be put down, publicly executed.

I searched Tossoonian’s figurines for reminders of Hepatia. Yes,
the features of his belles were Romanesque. Snake- haired Medusas of
Greek mythology stare out into space past your gaze. These bronze
figures seem to have been rescued from the Serapeum. The original
golden plaques are polished bronze, of course, and are as shiny and
smooth as mirrors. Others smack of Ptolemaic sphinxes and most sport
aquiline Roman noses.

Such not too subtle gems are more than a leitmotif of an exhibition
mounted in commemoration of Alexandria’s past cosmopolitanism. The
exhibition barely alludes to the multi- religious, multi-cultural
background of the artists. The three artists’ works are not framed
in the context of a city that has become a magnet for peasants from
the Delta and beyond. Tossoonian is the only one whose sculptures
feature human figures. Even so, his women are more reminiscent of
some Greco-Roman Madonna than mere country maidens.

Tossoonian’s sculptures resemble the works of the late Swiss painter
and sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Art connoisseurs glimpse something of
the ancient — Celtic, Greco- Roman or Egyptian? Unlike the statues
of the ancients, Tossoonian’s works stand upright, there is nothing
of the fallen visages of long dead pharaohs. There is no attempt,
either, to bring them back to life. Indeed, the bronze is designed
to feign the listless and lifeless.

And back to Badr. The Muslim, presumably on religious grounds, eschews
the human figure. Rosetta’s fortunes have historically been inversely
linked with that of Alexandria. And yet the smaller city is only a
stone’s throw away from its far more buxom older sister. But Badr
isn’t in the least interested in the treasures of Rosetta. He pays no
attention to the medieval rival to Alexandria with its streets studded
with mashrabeyas, wooden latticework windows, and the lakes engulfing
the seaport lined with tall reeds. Such a typically Rosetta scene,
Badr leaves for Louis to make the most of.

The latter uses intricate wooden paneling sparsely, but the timber
he uses in profusion and with such passion that his works appear
to leap out of some ancient history book. Louis fuses medieval and
ancient, Muslim and Coptic, Ptolemaic and Greco-Roman symbols and
signs with ingenious creativity. However, it is Badr who makes the
most of arguably the most significant find of Egyptology. Neither
a multilingual stele, nor a decree from Ptolomy V, a tax amnesty to
temple priests, Badr’s are stuffed with good lines, except that most
are unreadable. But Badr isn’t focussed on the content of the Rosetta
Stone, only on the inspiration he so obviously derives from the slab
of black basalt.

Lines rippling across granite. Arabic script mutates into hieroglyphs
and then back into Arabic calligraphy. It is all extraordinarily
prescient. The shapes of the stone themselves are designed to shed
light on the glowing illuminations that capture Alexandria at different
times of the day and in different seasons. These are apt descriptions
for Badr’s renditions of the Rosetta Stone. His take on that curious
object defies definition.

Badr’s letters are like pictograms. Some are in indecipherable script,
a make-believe language, others in Arabic. Pencilled on polished
surfaces, they so nearly resemble the Rosetta Stone, except they don’t.

The deciphering of hieroglyphs in 1824 by Jean-Francois Champollion of
France enabled the world to understand the secrets of ancient Egypt,
and opened up the mysteries of the Pharaohs. Badr applies himself to
the tremendous task of reinterpreting Alexandrian history through
the irregular shapes and weird writings engraved on his imitations
of the Rosetta Stone.

Black basalt is a hardy stone not easily worked or tamed. The Safar
Khan gallery is strewn with huge blocks of stone, timber and bronze
— like a show of excavations in some undisclosed dig somewhere near
Alexandria. The cosmopolitan city of yesteryear is the inspiration.

There is no inkling of the bustling contemporary port. Instead there
are numerous vestiges of the past.

Does an underlying constituency hold their disparate strands together?

A master of the right angle and the perfect circle, Badr reproduces
the curiously cut blocks of black basalt in a variety of shapes and
sizes, all paying tribute to the original.

The works of the other two artists are somewhat more inconstant, but
only slightly so. Louis’s pieces are easily identifiable. There are
clear changes of visual texture. Yet the dominant theme remains the
same. They are decorated with strange images, some faintly resembling
the ushatbi of the ancients. The Pharaonic influence is greatest;
however, the Fatimid, Mamluk, Ottoman and other Islamic influences
abound. Rabbits and antelopes hop and skip in total abandon.

His etchings aspire to the primitive. Colourless elegance yields to
the saturated earthy hues and icons of his imagination albeit adorned
in muted tones.

The creamy surface gets thicker and more clotted; the decorative work
almost incomplete. The insets and juxtapositions depict multiple
phases of Alexandrian, and Egyptian, history. Crafting an ageless
portrait is a fine art. Louis excels at adding the finer details
without embarking on the unqualified finish. He is neither fearful of
exploring the inner meanings of items found in plundered Pharaonic
tombs, nor on the age-old controversies that historically bedeviled
his hometown. Alexander the Great, the city’s founder, and Cleopatra
V, the last Ptolomaic queen of Egypt, and probably Alexandria’s
most famous daughter, are hinted at in the works of Tossoonian, but
only the faintest of hints. Do not look for such famous cosmopolitan
Alexandrian landmarks as the Cecil Hotel or the Constantine Cavafy
Museum. Neither does the spirit of Lawrence Durrell hover over the
works of these three Alexandrian artists.

Instead, pieces of Pompey’s pillar, the Fortress of Qaitbey are seen
and understood in touches by Tossoonian, feelings divulged by Louis,
and variegated duplications by Badr. They are, like the exhibition
itself, running a fine line between memory, the memorable and the
immemorial. Alexandria has profoundly influenced Western thought and
philosophy. The remains are the relics from its rich past. Carved
tombstone panels? An artistic tribute to the ancients.