In Many Worlds: A Discussion with Egyptian Artist Sabah Naeem

C U LTU R EWO R KS In Many Worlds A Discussion with Egyptian Artist Sabah Naeem JESSICA WINEGAR When she has free time between her responsibilities at the university and at home, Sabah Naeem sits in her family's apartment in a working-class neighborhood in Cairo, meticulously rolling and twisting newspapers into tightly woven balls. She takes print from Arabic, English, and French-language newspapers and coils or folds them together, creating a visual reference to the three cultural or colonial influences on contemporary Egyptian life. Sometimes patches of colored advertisements from the local press appear amidst these textual twists and folds—including SABAH NAEEM. 2000. MIXED MEDIA ON PAPER. [Meridians:feminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 146-62]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. 146 SABAH NAEEM. 1999. PAPER. truncated images offashion models, luxury homes, imported Mercedes cars, or European watches. In some of her other work, Naeem takes images ofpeople—men, women, Egyptians, Europeans, Africans, young, old—and draws the rolls and the twists directly on them. Carefully and repetitively, she inscribes many small gold, white, and red spirals, circles, and stars overcarefully selected portions ofthe images. Here a face is covered with an intricate spiral; there the entire background is awash in tiny stars, highlighting the image ofa poor woman holding a cigarette, gazing out at the viewer. In another piece, part ofa child's body is covered, with only the face, a foot, and a hand gesture left revealed. Rolls, twists, folds, and circles that both cover and reveal texts, faces, and bodies. These are the elements of Egyptian artist Sabah Naeem's work. She explains that each roll or circle is like a different, intenselypersonal , world. When placed together, these private worlds create something more general and universal. Likewise, when she covers parts of images with circles and stars, she highlights a gesture or expression (like IN MANY WORLDS I47 sorrow orwaiting) that could be found anywhere. Just as Naeem explores this relationship between the specific and the universal in her work, she lives her life at a similar intersection of"worlds," some specific and some shared. Naeem's story reflects the struggles of an emerging generation of lower-class, public-school educated artists living and working in their home societies,1while atthe same time trying to gain exposure in the U.S. and Western Europe. But in this foreign context, artists whose work critiques patriarchy or religious oppression in majority-Muslim societies, or which is at least interpreted to do so, tend to garner the most significant attention.2 Yet Naeem and others like her do not fit into this category—in part because their aesthetic interests lie elsewhere and are shaped by art worlds and social dynamics outside the West, in part because of their class positions, and in part because oftheir religious practice. In the following interview and accompanying images, we see that the major issues concerning Naeem in her work are shaped by the massive socioeconomic changes that have occurred in Egypt over the past thirty years. Notonlyare Naeem and hercolleagues amongthe firstlower-class Egyptians to move into the intellectual elite, but they are also part ofa generation3 that came ofage during the radical reorientation of Egypt from the U.S.S.R. towards the U.S. that occurred during Sadat's presidency . Now, as they begin their careers, theyare confronted with a second wave ofeconomic liberalization that is dramatically changing Egyptian society, especially its class structure and forms ofconsumption. Unlike senior artists, who often promote artistic national sovereignty, young artists like Naeem often stake out their position as simultaneously "global" and "Egyptian." Indeed, their differentclass backgrounds, combined with the political and economic atmosphere in which they grew up, create an engagement with the West—its ideas, products, and art—that appears quite different from that oftheir forebears. For example, to the dismay ofmany senior critics, Naeem juxtaposes materials and forms from different origins. She takes images from both Arab and European media, including advertisements for the luxury products increasinglyavailable in the changingeconomy. Manyofthe symbols that she draws over them, such as stars, are borrowed from Pharaonic tomb painting. In her nude paintings, she...