-
-
The allegorical ideal of resurrection has a number of historically identifiable contexts and interrelated connotations. Referring to the regeneration of life after death or, more generally, the resuscitation of life following a calamitous event, resurrection remains a central tenet in Christian theology and vital to the belief systems of both the Islamic and Judaic faiths.i In Judaism, there are multiple references to resurrection as a process during the course of the Book of Kings and throughout the Quran there are frequent mentions of the “Day of Resurrection” (Yawm al-Qiyamah), which largely refers to the belief in the Qiyama: the resurrection, that is, of the dead on the Day of Judgment.
The concept can be also found in Zen Buddhism (in the legend of Bodhidharma, for example) and in Hinduism (in the Ramayana, an ancient Indian epic). Elsewhere, in ancient Greek religion, the perception of resurrection proliferates, with numerous mortals — Achilles, Heracles, and Menelaus amongst them — becoming, following their deaths, immortal.
To the extent that the term has resonances across many, if not all, religions and cultures, it also has secular connotations that revolve around the principle of rising up, revivifying the body, or standing up to face an uncertain future with renewed vigor and optimism. These meanings are not just more inclined towards the secular but also touch on the aspirational logic of rebirth and rejuvenation: they impart, in sum, a hopefulness and a belief in the potential of renewal and subsequent transformation.
It is with these meanings in mind, alongside the latent historical significance of the term, that the artist Khaled Zaki has created his new series of eponymously titled works Resurrection, 2017. Comprised of nine, intimately related, marble sculptures, this series explores the materiality of form (alongside its ability to be transformed and revitalized), and the formal qualities of the very substance — specifically, its associations with an igneous process of transformative power — that constitutes these works.
-
To these inherent questions of form and materiality that underwrite Resurrection, we must add another decisive element: the specificity of the socio-historical and political conditions that have impacted on Egypt, specifically Cairo — alongside other cities such as Alexandria, Mansoura and Suez — and the impression that they left on how Zaki approached and developed this new series.
Recounting how he visited Cairo prior to the Egyptian revolution in 2011 — also known as the January 25 Revolution — and witnessed large groups of people who seemed to have given up all hope of change, Zaki has observed how their demeanor and general outlook appeared to suggest a weary acceptance of fate. In 2011, however, and later again following further seismic upheavals in 2013, something had profoundly changed.ii People had risen up across Egyptian cities and the despotic government of Hosni El Mubarak was overthrown. The quantity of protestors on the streets of Cairo (estimated to be as high as a million at some stages during the revolution), tended to gather around Tahrir Square which resembled, for some, a “war zone”.iii In rapid-fire succession, unlike anything ever seen in modern-day Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, the fifth President of Egypt (from June 2012 to July 2013), replaced Mubarak only to be in turn ousted and replaced by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in June 2014.
These momentous events, in their sheer energy and vigor, left an indelible impression on Zaki and the development of his new series of works. One element that the artist viewed to be historically important was the extent to which people had begun to stand up, literally, and be counted. This rising up directly references the Latin roots of the term resurrection: “to rise” (surgo) or “stand up” (surrectum).
-
-
As the fervor and optimism of 2011 morphed into the challenges associated with the rule of Mohamed Morsi, who remained in power for just over a year, the iconoclasm of 2011 became all too real as the Muslim Brotherhood, led by Morsi before his ouster, proceeded throughout 2012 and 2013 to destroy sculptures and images across Egypt. These included attacks on buildings in Media city, a complex located near Cairo, nearby to where Zaki had his own studio.
This corroboration between the geopolitical event of revolution and the aftermath of iconoclasm further informs core elements in the Resurrection series. Taken individually, each of these nine new sculptures has a clear coherence as figurative objects. Relating to various poses, from the passive (“Nostalgia”, “The Purgatory”), to the contemplative (“Whispering to Sands” and “Scribe”), to the votive (“Water Donor” and “The Wheat Donor”), to pugnacious pieces such as “Finding a Path”, they symbolize both waiting and the nascent presence of action and change that is in process.
Others, including “Nostalgia” and “Deep Silence”, suggest a preoccupied individual withdrawn into themselves and, in so doing, revealing an incipient disquiet. Each sculpture, made up of 6 individual segments, implies not only the missile-cum-stones mentioned above but a degree of formal flexibility; a sense of material transference and the simultaneous modification of energies that have multiple permutations.
However, the original inspiration for these works, and their apparently ongoing potential for rearrangement, comes from a destroyed statue of Ramses II who was the third Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty of Egypt. Located in the area of ancient Thebes, across the Nile River from Luxor, this 1200 metric ton colossal statue is widely considered to be the world’s largest statue.
On a visit there in 1996, Zaki was inspired not just by the sheer size of this statue but how its destroyed portions and segments suggested an oversized puzzle of sorts with interconnecting, associated parts. The corroded softness of the granite used in the toppled statue of Ramses II is also captured, in part, in the smoothness of the stones in the Resurrection series which, for Zaki, encapsulate the processes by which stones in a river are caressed into textured roundness over time by elemental forces that, again, recall the simultaneous accumulation and dissipation of energy.
The appearance of the segments in Resurrection, whilst maintaining an integrity to one another are also, to some degree, harmonized through repetition and texture. And repetition, of course, begets difference. Whilst these related forms remain inherently distinct, with the forcefulness of “Finding a Path” giving way to the reflective calmness of “The Scribe”, formal arrangement and re-arrangement gives rise to a rebirthing of sorts that recalls both the anomie of pre-revolutionary Egypt and the energy of post-revolutionary upheaval.
Whilst many artists around the time of 2011 and later chose to depict the revolution more forcefully and, in some cases, become actively engaged in it, Zaki’s approach here is more contemplative and remains both allusive in its symbolism and elusive in its multiple meanings. The literal crumbling of edifices and institutions, and the amassed concrete of social and political turmoil, finds its way into a meditation on form and the inherent potentiality of sculpture to signify a particular state of being.
These works are neither celebratory nor, strictly speaking, are they monitory. Rather, they evoke historical turbulence and attempt, in that moment, to encapsulate its significance, with works such as “Deep Silence” and “Nostalgia” maintaining a pensive aura of foreboding. Despite the obvious size and substance of these works, they also seem self-contained to the point of withdrawal, drawn in on themselves and apparently autonomous. In this respect, “Deep Silence”, to take but one example, also evokes a sense of fearfulness, a premonition of something more menacing and inauspicious that is a recurrent trope in Zaki’s oeuvre more generally. It can be seen in the mausoleum-like work “The Sarcophagus”, which was shown under the collective title Treasuries of Knowledge as part of the Venice Biennial in 2013.
These newer works in Resurrection, evincing as they do an impression of self-sufficiency also have other earlier foundations in work from 1995, specifically “White Bird”, whose form remains minimalist and poised, exuding an alert energy, and “A Bird from Upper Egypt”, 1997, which likewise imparts a sense of contained vitality. In both of these works, and “The Sarcophagus”, we get a clearer sense, as we do throughout the Resurrection series, of Zaki’s indebtedness to Egyptian modernism, not least the work of Mahmoud Mokhtar (1891-1934).
An Egyptian sculptor who attended the School of Fine Arts in Cairo upon its opening in 1908, Mokhtar developed a distinct modernist style that can be readily seen in his sculpture “Egypt Awakened”, (also known as “Egypt’s Renaissance” or “Nahdat Misr”). The sculpture, unveiled in 1928 at Midan Bab el Hadid, was subsequently relocated in 1955 to the forecourt of Cairo University in Giza. Symbolizing Egypt’s renaissance, Mokhtar’s sculpture depicts a woman unveiling next to a sphinx, the female form being a direct reference to Huda Sha’arawi, a pioneering Egyptian feminist leader, leading nationalist, and the founder of the Egyptian Feminist Union.
Following Egyptian independence from British rule in 1923, Mokhtar chose granite from Aswan in Upper Egypt as the material to symbolize the unity of the country in this colossal work and the post-colonial renaissance of its people. Likewise, Zaki is careful in his choice of materials and the Resurrection series uses white marble from Carrara, which is the same material used by Michelangelo and Adolfo Wildt 1868 – 1931, amongst others.
-
-
To the extent that these new works draw upon many different sources for their formal and conceptual reference points, Resurrection is, finally, concerned with an expressive economy of means that alludes to both the monumental, in sculptural terms, and to a formal fragmentation of sorts, as if each sculpture were part of a three-dimensional mosaic — the latter resembling an infinity of potential forms that is ultimately antimonumental. Given that they are all made up of 6 individual pieces they also suggest that if collapse should occur, the process of rebuilding could be achieved with, if not with ease, then at least a relative effortlessness and optimism that such reconstructions can be achieved. And this is a fundamental constituent in these works and Zaki’s approach to them: they are indeed self-contained, and clearly relate to his own experiences of political and social upheaval (and determine his own unique response to it), but they are also about the affirmative context of sculpture as a practice and the latent potential for transforming materials. If something is thinkable, imaginable, then it can be realized formally and informally. Again, we alight upon the twin poles of destruction and rebuilding, and how mechanisms of reassembling have been a mainstay not just of sculptural practice but of social and political orders today, for better and, indeed, worse.
Notes
i Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are historically considered in terms to be the largest of the Abrahamic religions, but there are others, including, for example, Babism, Shabakism, Samaritanism, Druze and Rastafari.
ii The original uprising against the authoritarian state apparatus in Egypt, which followed the outbreak of revolution in Tunisia, occurred on January 25, 2011, and resulted in the departure of Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011. From June 30 to July 3 of 2013, further protests were staged against the latter’s replacement, Mohamed Morsi. These latter protests were directly aimed at the Muslim Brotherhood and what was perceived to be their fanaticism, authoritarian disregard for the rule of law, and their advocacy of a predominantly Islamist agenda despite secular opposition. The protests against Morsi were also in part related to Tamarod, an Egyptian grassroots movement who claimed to have collected over 22 million signatures calling for the then president’s resignation. On July 3, 2013, Morsi was replaced by General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who, since his election on June 8, 2014, has been the Egyptian president.
iii It has been estimated that almost 1000 people died over this three week period and another 6000 were injured.
iv The use of cobblestones and stone in general continues to be a feature of uprisings and demonstrations in cities. The iconic beveled sampietrini stones that line the streets of many Italian cities, which are hewn from black basalt, have also been historically used in protests. Whilst one popular rallying cry uttered by protesters during the May 1968 protests in France was the apparently gnomic Sous les pavés, la plage !, or ”under the cobblestones, the beach!”.
