SHERIN GUIRGUIS

One I Call is a site-specific sculpture that reflects on the complex web of narratives surrounding deserts and desert communities. The piece is modeled after the traditional pigeon towers found throughout the desert villages of Egypt. The practice of homing pigeons spans multiple traditions, illustrating a narrative of migration across space and time. The piece stands at once as a beacon, a sanctuary, and a memorial for the people and communities of the desert whose histories are often dismissed or marginalized. The piece address concerns of cultural agency, environmental protection, and displacement at stake in the Coachella Valley and many similar desert communities across the world.

neville wakefield: How did growing up in Egypt influence your work, and, more specifically, how did that different experience in the desert feed into your work in Southern California?

sherin guirguis: I grew up in Luxor and Cairo, and they are cities that I love deeply—the culture, the people, the living history—yet, as part of a minority, the official history of the country doesn’t include me, and despite my wildest childhood dreams, moving to California did not provide that either!

I found that the biggest challenge of my migrant experience is the sense of displacement from both my original country and culture and my newly adopted one. This constant state of in-betweenness—with its questions of place, identity, and authenticity—is at the core of my work.

Meaning you’re kind of not at home anywhere.

Precisely. Like other immigrants living in the diaspora, I continue to occupy a liminal, in-between space. There isn’t a history book I can pick up and recognize, Oh, here’s my lineage. In an attempt to understand that position, my work points to overlooked sites and forgotten texts and histories.

One of the few places in Egypt where I do always feel at home is Luxor. I was born there, lived there until I was three, and continued to visit often. Built into the ruins of ancient Egyptian culture, Luxor is very much rooted in desert culture and ritual. It was my inspiration for One I Call.

Even within the California desert, there’s enormous diversity. When we started thinking about potential sites for your project, we were looking at the Salton Sea, a terminal lake which in a way is the most dystopian part of that area, but then ended up in Whitewater, a nature preserve to the north that has an almost Edenic quality. In many ways, the difference could not have been more extreme.

Yes, that was quite a shift, although I found both sites to be equally stunning despite their differences. Both sites are home to a wide variety of wildlife, much of which is endangered. Both sites were far off the beaten path, and the pilgrimage out to them is very much a part of the experience. Both sites teetered on the cusp of environmental disaster and heroics at one point or another. These places speak to the resilience and adaptability of small desert communities.

The Whitewater Preserve, as I came to learn, was a private fish hatchery, its waters polluted by the cattle ranches surrounding it. Ten years ago, five environmentalists under the umbrella of the Wildlands Conservancy restored it to its natural state and opened it to the public. My conversations with Jack [Thompson, the Preserve’s director] around art, ecology, and activism made it clear that this collaboration would be fruitful and that this would be the right site for the piece.

The complex histories that exist here in the Valley—of migration, displacement, environmental issues, deeply rooted traditions, rituals, and cultures—have all been marginalized and made almost invisible over time. It was clear that the project had to embrace that complexity and become a platform for these stories.

Yours was one of the pieces that took the longest to build. Visiting it during the process, it was striking how this small group of earth builders quickly created a community of work around the process of its construction and how that process became a social bond as well as an architectural one.

Yes. There was a team of seven builders—Don Worley, Tracy Polkownikow, Wade Lucas, Nathan Wright, Nisu and Aker—led by the earth architect Hooman Fazly. They had all studied under Hooman at Cal Earth Institute when Nader Khalili, its founder, was still alive, and they now travel the world building and teaching. It was an honor to be adopted by them into the culture of earth building, to learn about Khalili and the Superadobe process, which, as you point out, goes far beyond a construction method. Superadobe as Khalili developed it is a culture in and of itself, with its own rituals, politics, and even poetry. Oftentimes, the build felt like a spiritual experience.

I mean, how many construction sites do you encounter where Rumi is recited regularly, where every builder is an environmentalist, where empathy is the common language? And not a single piece of heavy equipment is in sight!

The way that it was created mimicked the formation of the rocks behind it—an echo of the geological strata that were its backdrop.

That’s the nature of working with adobe. It is a living material that changes with time and responds to its environment. The earth we used was from Whitewater, so the structure weathered in exactly the same way as the cliff behind it, just more rapidly. As the rains and winds hit, the smooth, finished surface began eroding, exposing the rocks and crystals within. When we were taking it down, we kept finding nests. Birds were living in it, and mice were living in it, mushrooms were growing, people had left things tucked in the burlap. And as I had hoped, it weathered its way back to the earth, and the site was left as we had found it.

This idea of homing pigeons and their function as early communicators relates to the original form.

Yes, one of the things I was most interested in with the pigeon tower as a model was the idea of invisible text and invisible ways of communicating as a means of activism. I was thinking about the anonymity of the web and social media, their use as tools to organize. The structure was also at the center of a historical incident in Egypt when, in 1906, British soldiers arrived at the small village of Denshawai and began shooting the pigeons as target practice. The villagers attempted to stop the soldiers, and a series of shootings and deaths ensued. The courts under British control sentenced the villagers to death by hanging. The outrage over this incident is thought to be one of the pivotal moments that led to the end of British occupation. For me, the pigeon tower became a symbol of independence, revolution, and anti-colonialism.

I remember one of the most magical moments, when Sean Milanovich, one of the tribal Bird Singers, came with his wife and child and effectively blessed the structure with the performance of a bird song. It seemed to speak to both localism and resistance.

When I met Sean, I had a lot of questions about the Coachella Valley and its history from the point of view of the tribes that have lived there for so long. He shared many histories about that particular canyon and the Whitewater area in general, and it was almost like a triangle of connections through time and place: me and my memories from Egypt, Sean and the history of the First People of the Coachella Valley, and Jack and his work at the Whitewater Preserve.

I was hoping to find a way to incorporate these unlikely relationships and narratives. I was thrilled and honored when Sean agreed to sing two bird songs that were about the history of the valley. We arrived early the day of the opening, and he preformed a ritual blessing of the site and of the

Your piece literally returned to the earth.

That was my original intention: this idea that the structure rises from the earth and then slowly disappears back into it. I can tell you that when it came time to take the piece down, it was much more difficult that I had anticipated!

This is the first piece that you’ve created at an architectural scale and where you’ve invited the audience to participate. Has that resonated in your work?

Many of my sculptures do invite the audience’s participation in some way. The kinetic pieces from the Cairo Trilogy series use that as a subtle call to action. I also think that my paintings do that as well.

One I Call, however, was my first site-specific piece, and the first at that scale. I think it has resonated mostly in my approach to my artistic practice. It makes physical what normally happens with, say, a painting. A painting, to my mind, is not complete until somebody steps up to it and has a reaction.

And it exists in conversation. That was the second strand of narratives that underpinned the work. What anecdotal, interesting encounters or conversations did it provoke among people?

There were many conversations about earth building, Rumi, activism, meditation, the environment, personal histories, and rediscovering lost places. One I Call drew people to a place where personal stories and experiences were exchanged—a common ground.

This experience was very much about shifting one’s expectations of value. We all zoom across the 10 Freeway and exit at our expected destinations missing all the hidden things in between. To me, naturally, the in-between spaces are the most interesting. Whitewater is a perfect example.

I love that you drive off the freeway, and little by little the city disappears.

Leaving civilization behind.

Your phone stops working. Your Google Maps stops working. You freak out. You just have to go with it.

As each of those layers comes off, you slow down as well. And you start to pay attention.

By the time you reach the work, you’re ready to just sit there. Sit there and just be there.