AAW international artists workshop 2012

AAW INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS WORKSHOP FOR YOUNG ARTISTS 11TH FEBRUARY – 23RD FEBRUARY 2012

Initiatives and Founded by

Artistic directors REEM HASSAN and MOATAZ EL SAFTY Founding director of AAW projects Founding director of EAN for arts and Culture Founding director of EAN Egyptian artists network

Special Thanks for their supporting

Funded by

Hosted by

About AAW international artists workshop 2012

By Moataz El Safty

At the outset I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the British Council for its commendable support for this artistic event, in this circumstances in which Egypt is going through. Was it not for the material and moral support of the team of Ms. Cathy Costain and Ms. Shaima ElBanna, I wouldn’t have been able

to

organize this artistic event with this level and with so many of participant artists who are 11 artists from several countries such as Jordan, Sudan, England and Italy in addition to the five young artists from Egypt.

I also want to thank

Goethe Institute in Alexandria for hosting this workshop and providing a suitable space for work and setting up a display of its results within the halls of the Institute, as I also thank Hassan for her constant me

during

the

Dr. Reem assistance to

workshop

and

her

effective contribution in achieving the set goals, they have all Thanks, hoping this support will continue so that the artists and the organizers are able to hold such events, as art is what helps the development of societies and the evolution of public taste, leading to more understanding, acceptance and the emergence of dialogue between countries on a framework of transparency and efficiency so the world thinking, and peace would prevail.

becomes a different one with similar

The International Workshop is a workshop in the field of visual arts of different kinds of oil painting and sculpture and Photography and Arts Media and artistic print and work processed in a vacuum and others, the workshop have been held before in 2006 in the field of visual arts and was available for all ages for artists and in 2008 was devoted to female artists of all ages and this third session is devoted to young male artists with the ages between 30 and 34 years old, and is designed to host a group of artists to work together for a certain period within the framework of artistic dialogue and direct identification of different types of art and creating the right environment to remove the distance bridges and break the lack of knowledge barriers, as it is working on the relationship between the arts and cultural dialogue. The thought of holding this workshop began since 2010, but we could not set it up because of problems with support and funding, and when this support made available we were able to set it up in this way, and with that efficiency.

This workshop was held over 12 days from 11 to 23 February at Goethe Institute in Alexandria, and this workshop brought together 2 artists from Italy and 2 from Sudan and Jordanian artist, another English and five other artists from Egypt. In the third day of the workshop a presentation of each participant artist to display his past work and to give him the opportunity to introduce himself to the other artists and to create a space for dialogue and exchange of ideas, which facilitates the process of creating a

space for exchange and the possibility of working together in the production of works of art. this is what is visible in the results of the workshop from the participation of artists and their experimental attempts with the Jordanian Artist. â–˛ Lina Barghouthi through her work in the artistic print (Monoprint), and attempts at experimentation of Sudanese and Egyptian Mutaz Elemam and Hadi Bouraai also the Sudanese, Ashraf Abdel-Monim.

The workshop has given a full opportunity for each artist to work freely and in a trial without complying to a specific topic or area of art, and all the available spaces to work in the Goethe Institute has become as an area of freedom of artistic absolute, we see some of the artists working on the ground and others outside the gallery with the growing relations and cross-talk every day.

And to complete the key

objectives of the workshop

organized a trip patrol expedition to the city of Rashid,

we with

features of rural heritage civilization, to touch the present and see what may be new to each artist, which helps thinking and creativity and experimentation that its source are the scenes and new projections from the Egyptian environment and can feel how important this trip when all of the artists return and their relationship with each other has increased and the contribution of most of the artists in the selection of some of the environmental elements of the leaves of trees and others to help the Italian artists â—„ Debora Fede and â–˛Elena Givone who were collecting all that they see from the environmental

elements that can be used inside plastic bags inspired by each

environment they visit, and this is what resulted in their work called "alike but different" and then each artist chose what suits him and suits his taste to give to these 2 artists to make a plastic board added to the total plastic bags and which have been all

placed in the gallery, they used the

jugs of

transparent glass filled with water as well and put those items after wrapping then in a layer of wax, put on the cover of each jug an image of a specific person that has been viewed and photographed in the various places they visited, and which bear different human characteristics.

And we see the English artist Sinead► Stewart that gave the workshop the spirit of American School in Photorealism and which is based on the record of a moment to view as a camera does for some scenes, of a women sitting , the wandering vendors and the different doors of an Old heritage, which led to some of the artists taking various shots with their own vision and sending them to her, so she might find what she’s looking for or to coincide her ideas with what been sent to her.

The Sudanese artists Mutaz Elemam ▲and Ashraf Abdel Monim▲, worked side by side for the duration of the workshop and they each have a constituents of a professional oil painter made the rest of the artists, especially the Egyptians have a close experience of how to solve a painting and how to start painting and create artwork we saw Ashraf and how he used a flat triangle graphic solutions in terms of this abnormal space in shape and adding a little color spaces came out a descriptive work of art having all the values of artistic painting.

And this made the Egyptian artist Hady Boraey► who is a specialist in the field of the artistic print to do serious attempts at experimentation with forms of surfaces with different raw materials, oily variety, and he is certain that this workshop is an experimental workshop not meant to establish a traditional gallery and rather to display the results and they don’t have to be complete and with high artistic values but it is based on experimentation in the fields of art and with nonconventional raw materials, not covered before.

The Egyptian artist Ahmed Abulnasr ►also came to us with his photographic attempts representing the ten faces of the artists involved and had tinted each face with his vision originating from living with

him in the workshop, and has prepared each artist alone and photographed him in a different position and made the wall of the gallery a window for him on the artist’s inside and added what he saw through the lens of the camera on the photographic space does not exceed 30 × 30 cm, and he was able, through graphics programs on the computer, to achieve a artistic product that can be classified as belonging to the school of Conceptual Arts.

a variety of attempts came from other Egyptian artists Wafaa Yehia, Mona Saad and Mohamed Sabry and and , who have completed their personal experiences with the previous attempts to take advantage of the current reality experiments the existing around them and in the same case we find the Sudanese artist Moataz AlImam with his distinctive color swatch and abstract incarnations and his relations with color between hot and cold.

It is important to mention that the five Egyptian artists who participated in this workshop have added to them many experiences, whether knowing the other and the way he works and direct contact with the various artistic trends even if the thirteen days of the workshop were not sufficient to the extent desired of it to be for more effective dialogue between artists and the response between them, and that is what we will be doing next time.

we should refer to the idea of development work, which took place on Saturday, 18th of February in the center of Franco Basalia for Mental health and won the acceptance of some of the artists of the workshop to work with this program, especially foreign artists without Arab artists, this work came by chance, as the Centre Franco Basalia announced for the establishment of mural reflects the Egyptian countryside with the participation of psychiatric patients with Dr. Reem Hassan prior to the workshop with a few days.

and from here came the idea of proposing this development work to the artists and it was met with welcome from some of the participants to work with the patients for a day and produce a shared Mural work and contribute to this psychic development work, to contribute with little happiness to these patients, the International Workshop became as two events for two different in label, but common in the overall objective of the collective work and community development. this project has already been completed, which added to the biography of the International workshop and to our resume as organizers that we had a role in the production of such development projects (outreach programme), and this idea and this development work cannot be done this way without the support of the grant provided by the British Council and which has allowed us the opportunity to provide raw materials of colors and equipment and also move from Alexandria to Kafr El Dawar and vice versa.

To summarize what we said formerly, we say that the basic steps in the workshop, which were developed to break the individuality barrier and to create a conversational exchange are: - Set up a presentation for each artist to display his previous work and the ideas that he came with to implement them during the workshop.

- holding a periodical exploratory trip to allow for convergence opportunities between artists and the country they came to and may not know much about and add new scenes stored in memory and may help touch the footsteps of new artistic features emerging from the views they visit.

- Search for additional events to stimulate collective work and assist in the creation of effective development programs.

- Showing that artistic experments resulting from the residence for 12 days for recipients and visitors who came to see what has been done in the workshop.

- And finally the work of a round circle for all participants to allow us as organizers to hear the different viewpoints of the artists about the workshop and find out what may have been added to them or not, technically and organizationally, in addition to the report, which will be sent by each participant artist after his return to his country on his vision positive and negative during his stay and his participation in the workshop.

These are the general principles that I have worked on, and these are the steps that we have made since the announcement of the workshop, as well as visit some of the exhibitions held during the workshop at the Jesuits Cultural Center and in Atelier Alexandria or attending of the film program, which was held at the Goethe Institute in Alexandria in the late days of the workshop. we can say that if not for the support of the British Council we couldn’t have managed this workshop, we couldn’t have held it in the first place in terms of cost of accommodation and meals and means of propaganda for the publications and accompany files to each artist in order to be informed in advance of every step of the steps from the beginning of the workshop and to the end.

Report by Artistic directors Moataz El Safty and Reem Hassan

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The participants HADY BORAEY WAFAA YEHIA MOHAMED SABRY AHMED ABUELNASR MONA SAAD MUTAZ ELEMAM ASHRAF MONIM LINA BARGHOUTHI ELENA GIVONE DEBORA FEDE SINEAD STEWART

EGYPTIAN EGYPTIAN EGYPTIAN EGYPTIAN EGYPTIAN SUDANESE SUDANESE JORDANIAN ITALIAN ITALIAN BRITISH