The Cairo effect: during the 9th Cairo Biennale a striking contrast prevailed between the staid official event and several livelier satellite exhibitions

The 9th Cairo International Biennale opened on the night of Dec. 13, 2003, with a convocation of Egypt's official art world and other artists, academics, press and government types. Among those on hand were the U.S. ambassador to Egypt, David Welch, and Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian minister of culture, who, trailed by a small crew of cameramen, inaugurated the evening's ceremonies. The opening had the desultory drone of a required diplomatic function that has seen better days, instead of the hectic, heady atmosphere of a contemporary art event. Reinforcing the mood of yesterday were the majority of works on display at the Biennale, which remained up through Feb. 13, 2004. In contrast, "PhotoCairo" and a number of satellite exhibitions held at venues in the city's downtown offered a more provocative view of contemporary Egyptian art, an alternative to the retro esthetics and ideologies on view at the official event.

Wasted Opportunities

Like Istanbul, Cairo is a city where Europe and America have long dallied with the Middle East in an uneasy relationship, one that is particularly volatile now. In December, the city twinkled with miles of Christmas lights and decorations that seemed somehow tied to Egypt's colonial past. While the site had, at least, weather and location going for it, it also bristled with armed soldiers and police whose presence forcefully reminded visitors of the political present, a sober indication that Camp David is now ancient history.

The Biennale was housed in three main venues on Zamalek, a verdant, upscale island in the Nile in central Cairo. The Palace of Arts in the Opera House complex is an awkwardly partitioned exhibition space, where too many works were hung too closely together, but it was nonetheless the best of the three. The others were the Centre of Arts-Zamalek and the Gezira Art Center, formerly elegant villas that are now rather shabby but would have had a certain raffish charm had they not, too, been so overcrowded with work so indifferently installed. (There was a purported fourth site, the Fine Arts Gallery in the Opera House, but--as was true in the last Biennale--it seemed always to be closed.) The exhibition presented 220 artists from 56 countries, breaking the previous record of 51 countries set by the 8th Biennale [see A.i.A., Jan. '02]. Calling itself the largest international exhibition in the Arab world, the 2003 event included a sizable proportion of nations, both of Arab and other ethnicities, from the Middle East and North Africa, among them Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Turkey and Yemen. The only sub-Saharan countries represented were Mauritius and Sudan. Although Ghana was listed on the invitation, I could not find any Ghanaian work, nor did any appear in the catalogue. There was also a fair representation from Western Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as a scattering of artists from the Americas and East India.

The Biennale offered a rare opportunity to see contemporary global art from a different perspective, yet it wasted that opportunity, for the most part, on dated, uninspired, provincial work with almost nothing that stood out. On view were many artists who are unknown in the West, and probably in the Middle East as well. But what are critics and curators supposed to make, for example, of three Mongolian artists, Gungaa Dashtseren, Bayanduuren Bayanjargal and Batbayer Doudon, whose modestly sized, inoffensive works on paper (abstractions, landscapes and calligraphy) were tucked away in a small room upstairs in the Gezira Art Center? By most current standards, including those of other biennials, they would be dismissed, but given some sort of context--which we were not--we might have better assessed them. Is it enough to know, merely, that they are from Mongolia? How, without being better equipped, can we correct our "orientalist" gaze--a term in frequent, accusatory use here--which can be both too forgiving, i.e., too condescending, and too harsh, too "globalized"? How do we get beyond cultural tourism and cast off the First World's esthetic burden?

An international event of this scope presumably wants an international audience, but remarkably little outreach or information was forthcoming from the organizers, at least to the non Arabic speaking press. Lest this sound sour, I suspect that the disregard was more or less general, due to disorganization rather than to bias. Ultimately, the only source of information was the catalogue, which is bilingual, in Arabic and English, but is otherwise maddeningly opaque as a reference. It is sloppily assembled, full of contradictions and misspellings, and with little that is substantive. Worst of all, the order of its entries is incomprehensible--if indeed any exists. Not even the announcement card listed countries alphabetically. The wall labels were equally unhelpful (in English, that is; the Arabic portion was usually longer). All that was given was the name of artist and country, if that, and no data about the work--not even a title. Wisely, some artists provided their own handouts and images, but many did not. In any case, they might have been better introduced by their hosts.