2015-Interview with Dilan Ayyildiz about the Mardin Biennale, May 2015

Dilan Ayyildiz in conversation with Khaled Hafez about the Mardin Biennale, May 2015

 

DA – Could you please tell me a little bit about yourself, your background? 

What was the motivation led you to the art world? 

 

KH – I was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1963. I have always lived in Cairo, this cosmolpolitan hub and melting point between cultures and religions. Since both my parents were doctors in the Egyptian army, I was somehow led to study medicine, as it was the seventies, and no one could understand my wish to study fine arts and / or cinema. I studied painting behind the back of my parents; I followed the evening classes of the Cairo School of Fine Arts (Faculty of Fine Arts) in the eighties, and studied painting under two great painters: Hamed Nada and Zakaria EL Zeiny. After attaining a medical degree in 1987 and M.Sc. in 1992, I gave up medical practice in the early nineties for a career in the arts. I had already started exhibiting professionally since i was 23. Two decades later obtained a Master’s Degree (MFA) in new media and digital arts from Transart Institute (New York, USA) and Danube University Krems (Austria).

I paint since I was 5, and I became addictive to film and cinema almost at the same age, so it was the most natural thing for me to do both today. It just took me decades to do painting and film comfortably. I guess I was five when started with wax and pastel crayons to draw on the walls ; my first memories start when I was three, there was no art then, but I remember my father, who was  a doctor in the army, taking me to watch bon fires on the Kasr el Nil bridge along the Nile, he was in his military süit. My very second memory when he was posted in Algeria as part of the technical support Nasser was giving to the newly independent Algeria. I drew and painted on the wall as far as my energy and height took me. I was always punished since my parents had to deliver their Alger apartment in the very same state they received it in. I never seemed to learn, and I never stopped doing art since then.

 

DA – Which part of the world –what cities– affected your works mostly?

KH – Cairo and Paris certainly had a massive impact on my work. Both cities are colorful, cosmopolitan, and each time one dwells in any of those cities, s/he becomes an owner: one owns those cities after a few days of living and interacting with the space and the people. I also like Sarajevo, a space/city that kidnapped me form the first second, as if I had lived there before. İn later years, Istanbul had a similar impact on me. Berlin and Dresden are also favourites. I feel much inspired after visiting certain cites, more than other cities.

 

DA – Your works focus on dichotomies. What do you find important about them? 

KH – Juxtaposing contradictions beside each other on any one surface brings the best and the strongest characteristics from each. In the Arabic language literatüre and prose, there is the critical term “Ta’dad”, a term that simple means “opposing meanings”, and is usually linked with strong and most influential meanings in phrase aesthetics. I always use dichotomies, which in this case mean that I use juxtaposition of opposites, to put the viewer into a situation of visual choice between two opposing elements. The viewer decides later what they like or dont. In recent years i do the same process in film as well. In my work, i believe that we live today in a process of cultural recycling ; we sanctify figures of today in accordance to our needs, the same way we previously handled our gods and saints.

In my painting i manipulate ancient gods to represent the sacred, since i personally do not know how GOD looks like, but i know how we previously symbolized God or gods according to what was needed then. Perhaps now we need ONE mighty entity, before i twas more of a superhero narrative, where every icon, god or saint had a role to play in an entertaining narrative.

DA – What do you think about the contemporary art in Egypt? 

What are its specific features and how does it influence other fields like politics?

KH – Egypt has a very noisy and colorful art scene, with a very healthy heirarchy of power; you can distinctly see three protagonists / players: Public spaces / galleries with their state production budgets, private spaces / galleries with commercial and slaes-oriented interests, and cultural-non-for-profit institutions that are in some cases interesting and help fresh experimenation from younger or older artists, and in other cases abusive of foreign funding, and those hurt more than they help. On the other hand, there are artists who perfer to sustain independence and either work with the three players or away from all three protagonists. I think the scene in Egypt can be compared to the scense in Tehran and in Istanbul, as those scenes are large, with a huge cultural overload, and a large base of culture-consumers more than any other cities in the Middle East. 

The sector of intelligenzia in Egypt –if I can call it so–, inclusive of the visual arts scene in Egypt, has a more or less socialist inclination, I think like most cases in the civilized World after the industrial revolution. This intelligenzia has a wide circle of influence, as they are omnipresent in the televised media universe, and hence are effective in guiding the masses. The influence was seen perfectly with the ousting of the regressive and retarded Muslim Brotherhood regime and the saving of the country from the dark ages. The televised media played a massive role in moving the masses, and the intelligenzia (including all art sub-secotrs) played a great role there.

 

DA – How do you position yourself in this world? 

KH – I am an observer, i try not to judge, and i work like a laboratory scientist sometimes, and as a historian of times and places at other times. I love the image and i love making images in all sorts: moving or static.

 

DA – What is the artist’s role in the political world to you? 

KH – I can speak about myself only, as anything and everything i will tell you is subjective. To myself I like the observer role, and I like to propose questions ONLY, not answers. I want the viewers to attempt to find the  answers; i have a lot of questions and no answers. SOme of my colleagies like to fight, they motivate people to physical resistance; I personally like to stay at somse distance and document the fight, and the apocalypse. I always propose question though, and this is my method of resistance: to propose questions.

DA – You combine ancient Egyptian figures in your works with new media figures. Could you please talk about it, what do those figures symbolize? How do you think they are related to each other? 

KH – In my painting, I use imagery of body perfection and treat them to reflect metamorphosis and the movement from one state to another; for the male figures I appropriate images of body builders, and for the female figures I use images extracted from advertising and from cheesy commercial tabloids. 

The images are enlarged archival color and black and white photocopies and silk-screen prints. 

i like to break barriers between Past and Present, and between East and West, and between Sacred and Profane ; manipulating imagery of today’s consumer’s goods culture, mostly american in nature, and juxtaposing those with ancient Egyptian gods allows me to attain this destruction of barriers.

When you look at Batman (as an american superhero) and Anubis (God of the underworld) from the front and the back, you will be surprized that they look identical ; the only difference is in profile ; but the interesting part is that both icons/superheros have the same function : protection against evil forces.

The same goes for Catwoman and Bastet (godess of domestication, the sesual female figure with a mask of a cat), and so many other symbols of Hollywood-mediatized heroes who represent consumerism and their ancient Egyptian very sacred counterparts, who represent everything sacred and worshiped.

The whole thing is a process of visual, ideological and cultural recycling.

When i paint, i stopped long ago making sketches according to rules and laws of composition, form, shades and light, sicne those are post-renaissance rules, that appear and disappear sometimes even in the most contemporary pf apinting today ; i use instead the graphic designers’ methodology of lay-outing : in fact an ancient egyptian approach of painting, where all elements are placed in trial-and-error manner to create the best narrative. I let my Anubis metamorphoses into Batman thus eliminating the notion of Past and present, East and West, Sacred and profane. Body builders and top-models metamorphose into gods who were once sacred ; this allows me to mingle fiction with reality too, in an alternative reality.

 

The choice of the image reflects always the perfection of body proportions, a criteria used in all Mediterranean mythology, and a trait that does not represent a significant proportion of ANY population; this provides for my desire to mingle fiction with reality.

I link imagery of the ancient iconography with deja-vu contemporary elements, hence the use of Anubis (God of the underworld) and Batman, Bastet (Goddess of domestication) and Cat-woman; the icons are manipulated to insinuate metamorphosis; I believe that we are at a point in history where there is cultural recycling: visual, conceptual, beliefs among other aspects.

Nute, goddess of the skies, the beautiful woman who leans with both hands and feet on the lying Gebb (god of earth and lands), elongated in a supernatural manner to span the entirety of the skies, is omnipresent in my painting; the presence and symbol of this goddess in ancient Egyptian tombs is outstanding: she is pictured to take the sun of man (sunrise) from birth to the grave (sunset). In my painting I appropriate top models from advertising and distort the figure to simulate the sacred goddess; I try to probe the notion of sacred (gods and goddesses) with the ephemeral/consumable (advertising idols).

I use three types of flowers: Tulip, Sunflower and Lotus. The use of the flower symbol / image sometimes, represents beauty, perfection, regeneration, and –like in the Greek Mythology– metamorphosis; in cases of roses and tulips, the use carries a profane carnal/sensual reminiscence. Both represent in the European/western mythology the counterpart of the lotus flower/plant in eastern cultures, mythology and religions. 

In my work, and in the work of other Egyptian contemporary image makers, the use of déjà vu motifs like lotus is avoided because it eliminates the esotericism and renders the image too rhetoric or accessible. 

 

DA – Could you please talk about your role and work at the Mardin Biennale, On Presidents & Superheroes? 

KH – The 3-minute work probes, ironically, social changes I personally lived through my childhood, adolescence and adulthood in Egypt.

The initial concept of on presidents and superheroes was drafted to probe several issues I usually address in my video work as well as in painting, the central notion of “identity”, an impossible-to-properly-define entity. I am particularly intrigued by the 6 elements that formed my art projects for fifteen years, namely: time, past and present, the superhero or the role model, the process of cultural recycling, contemporary visual imagery in their kinetic and static forms, and the sacred values versus the neo-consumer values of globalization. All elements combined play in a formula that creates an Egyptian hybrid identity that I have seen developing over the past two decades of my creative practice. 

 

Every civilization looked for the imaginary super-hero for protection against evil forces, from ancient Anubis to modern Batman. In the fifties and sixties, the voice of president Nasser echoed from the Atlantic ocean to the Persian gulf, was broadcast live, every citizen literally froze all activities and planned their days according to the time of the speech of Nasser in order to listen to the superhero of modern times. Today, with the collapse of the Pan Arab theory and ideology, superheroes of religion took over, with their centuries-old dress codes and primitive behaviour.

 

For the A77A Project: on Presidents & Superheroes, I used a battery of techniques I used in my previous two videos: Visions of a Contaminated memory (2007, Sharjah Biennale) and The Third Vision Around 1.00 pm (2008, the 3rd Guangzhou Triennale, the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale); I wrote the script, while collecting stock footage and images from different sources. For the A77A Project, I used for the first time telephone imagery posted on different bloggers’ spots, contemporary real street imagery taken by lay non-professional citizens through their telephones and compact digital cameras. I even joined the hundreds of bloggers by posting my own images; I used telephone camera and a compact pocket camera that was ready in my canvas bag wherever I went; most of the time I shot during daylight, as the precision of images was not as important as the overall changing cityscape. I stitched all images in linear pattern to create one backdrop cityscape where the superheroes dwell. To complement my work, I grabbed tens of brilliant images taken by anonymous authors, removed their backgrounds on Photoshop, and inserted them on the visual track as backdrops for the superheroes.

 

The intriguing part is that such “democratized” practice, made available by anyone and available for everyone, becomes an open source of information much away from censorship and intellectual property rights constraints. 

The work, through animating two figures out of one of my large-scale canvases and making them, in cartoon animation, “possess” a 3-D figure to metamorphose into one of my favourite ancient gods, Anubis. The newly created and possessed Anubis dwells in the streets of urban Cairo today, intermingling with street paradoxical citizens and situations. The video incorporates my painting elements and moves them in animation. The work documents the current state of the streets of Cairo, once described as one of the most beautiful downtowns in the world. 

 

The music score for the video was created from free source digital loops, and mixed at a professional sound studio to incorporate the soundtrack of the famous Nasser resignation speech of June 1967 right after the military defeat.

 

DA – How did your path ccross with the biennale?

KH – In 2013 I was lucky and honored to work with Beral Madra, the Turkish curator for whom I have utmost respect and admiration. Beral’s project involved several artists from the Middle East and Central Asia to create a Project for the Vladikavkaz Museum of Art in the Republic of North Ossetia, Russia. The festival that was curated by Beral Madra was ALANICA, an anuual international gathering and exhibition at the museum. In Vladikavkaz I met Ferhat Ozgur, a great artist and a brilliant educator, as well as the artist Dilare Akay. I had instant admiration to Ferhat’ art work, and i guess it was reciprocal, as i had showed him my work On Presidents and Superheroes, and he immediately invited me fort he Mardin Biennale.