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In 1998 William Wells emerged as a leading curatorial figure in the Middle Eastern and Egyptian scene of contemporary practice when he and Yasser Gerab established the infamous Townhouse Gallery in Downtown Cairo.
Set in a backstreet alley full of car mechanics, carpenters, old-fashioned coffee shops, the Gallery has evolved from being a space for artist's exposure to become an educational and cultural institution in fusion with the surrounding society. Celebrating a successful decade of the Townhouse Gallery, Contemporary Practices caught up with Wells for a brief conversation at the coffee shop across the street.
First, let us here about your background. When did you first visit Cairo?
I was studying the Pharaohs' dynasties that brought me to Egypt for the very first time in the late 1970s. After finishing two degrees one in Ancient History and the other in Art History, I began to work for the Art Council in Great Britain as an educational officer. This led me to traveling around the world with all the expeditions that came to London as part of workshops for understanding the language of art.
At the same time, I built a small gallery and studio not so dissimilar to the Townhouse Gallery. Set in South London, it was a small factory that I named Unit Seven Studios. However, when I was practicing as an artist, I didn’t find a great deal of satisfaction because I felt that the artists around me were extremely gifted people but they weren’t always able to articulate and realize their artistic aspiration in its full potential. This was a major obstacle during the 1980s when publicity was extremely important. So my interest became more concerned with the discussion other people's work rather than producing work of my own. I got a great pleasure out of this because it facilitated my role in fostering a greater public understanding of the works of art in question.
In 1985, I decided to come to Cairo for one year to see if there would be a possibility of setting up a gallery similar to the one I had in London but I was disappointed by the narrowness of the work produced. Also, the galleries were commercially devoted to selling work produced by established artists. Although El-Mashrabia Gallery was running, there weren’t more activities in Downtown Cairo, a place I found very interesting. In the following years, I worked on and off with some development agencies to document the various aspects of the programs they were running in Egypt. This allowed me to go beyond Cairo to the countryside to see how these programs were working and to see for myself the difficulties that the people were facing away from the urban settings of Cairo. As I had studied topics such as healthcare and education in Egypt I had some insight into how Egyptians in rural areas might think, and what their dreams and expectations might include if they were to move to Cairo.
In the late 1980s, for another year, I was asked to teach art in a Heliopolis School which allowed me to discover the complexity of the educational system in Egypt. For instance, the pressure on the Thanaweya Amma's students and the great expectations of their families also helped me to gain a better understanding of how Egypt works. Meanwhile, I continued to frequent galleries, only to notice the difficulties that artists were also facing. I found out that all these problems existed in a complex interrelated web. In the following three years, I became the head of the secondary department in the British International School where I was introduced to another class of young Egyptians who came from wealthy families. A totally different class, they were extremely bright students who had high aspirations to go to the American University in Cairo (AUC) but had hardly any connections with what was happening in the turmoil of the city.
After a year's absence from Egypt in 1997, in which I set up an art department in the Emirates and visited Cairo every few months, it was perfect timing and Yasser Gerab and I established the Townhouse. We wanted to showcase the young contemporary artists who were producing extremely interesting work of an international standard. Before the Townhouse the works of these artists were never before seen in Egypt.
Why the time was perfect?
This current generation with their access to new media, such as the internet and satellite television, have been exposed to and are artistically influenced by the new visual art languages currently utilized all over the world in New York, Paris, Tokyo and Sydney.
The Egyptian government has also opened Salon El-Shabab that became a fantastic opportunity for them to show their experimental work. Unfortunately, the Salon only used to take place once a year.
I remember, in the beginning, that we had lot of supporters who were less skeptical than people of the art world. When we opened the Townhouse, a lot of people told me that it would never work even though its location and the space itself were perfect. However Yasser and I believed that we had nothing to lose since lot of similar projects in Eastern Europe were born and still survive even thought they continue to face many challenges.
As a creative project, the Townhouse also aimed, and continues to aim, to reach out to marginalized communities. Communities such as; street children, shoeshine people and car mechanics, branches of society with whom I had spent a lot of time communicating and working with when I worked in development.
Thus, the Townhouse became a contemporary art center where people interested in contemporary art would come to an exhibition opening on a Sunday couched in the surrounding reality of the local community.
What's your ten-year memory of the Townhouse activities?
Our initial intention was to link up with the other art galleries because I always believed that co-operation is the most important way to move everything forward. In the last decade, Townhouse Gallery acted as a source of inspiration for a lot of young artists and cultural practitioners of art, theatre or photography, who wanted to open up their own in spaces in popular districts. In the beginning we faced lot of bureaucratic problems but they weren’t serious enough to make us close the project.
Ten years down the road, the art environment in Cairo has seen a great deal of dramatic change. There is the Cultural Art Council of Egypt, which consists of people working together and groups following certain disciplines and here are now other spaces that were established by young artists. In the beginning, Townhouse was attracting all the attention and the criticism but now young artists have a greater choice of spaces in which to exhibit their work. Also there are many different organizations for the promotion of art in the independent sectors, like ourselves, for example as we do things for free or by donation creating greater accessibility for young artists. After ten years, I am pleased since we have been able to inspire people to go on further with their creative projects.
Over the years, was there any change in the relationship between the official arts establishment and the private galleries?
Contemporary Art around the world suffers financially from a lack of corporate and government support. In a country like Egypt, there are other financial priorities like healthcare, education, monument restoration and the upkeep of tourist facilities that generate more income.
For instance, Salon El-Shabab, which was a governmental initiative, was extremely important due to the lack of artistic spaces. The government also needed to assume more of a curatorial role because its exhibitions tended to have 300 people showing in any one given space so it was hard to identify one artists work from another. The government needs these curators as badly as the independent sector.
Due to this overall lack of curatorial experience in the Egypt the Townhouse held its first related workshop that was advertised only in Egypt but ended up including more than twenty participants who came from all over the world.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime for these emerging curators to work with six established and international professionals in the field. We were encouraged by the success of the first workshop and decided to run a year-long similar program starting this summer.
I think that independent spaces should seek funding from corporations that have social responsibilities like art development and practice. So wee created a group called, Friends of the Townhouse where we invited these people to see our activities and to participate in educational projects involving children and theatre. By doing so, these businessmen, who have some money to spare, will have sense of involvement in the Townhouse activities and will acquire a better understanding of contemporary arts practices.
Tell us about the initial selection of your artists. We know that some artists had already started exhibiting before Townhouse such as; Amre Heiba, Youssef Nabil, Hesham Nawar and Khaled Hafez and had also been showing for a while in the private or public gallery spaces. However there is a whole new generation who started with you, like Ahmad Askalani, Maha Maamoun, Sabah Naim, Dina el Gharib, Hala El Koussy, Ossama Dawood, Bassem Magdi, Tarek Zaki and Doaa Ali, to mention a few.
Due to the fact that we are focused in three areas; contemporary practices, development and education, we are more interested in artists linked to the society in which they are living whether they are celebrating the diversity of an urban city like Cairo or highlighting the daily difficulties. For instance, some female artists concentrate on the personal and private gender issues.
Quite clearly, I am not interested in abstract artists since the government provides opportunities for those who are working in that area. When artists come to me with a similar portfolio of expressionism or abstraction, I often recommend for them other spaces.
What can you tell us about the interest of international curators in Egyptian artists? What do you think their interest is due to?
Everything coming from the Middle East generates immense interest but there are different aspects to this interest, healthy and unhealthy.
Of course, it is wonderful to find international curators visiting Cairo galleries and going into our archives to discover new artists for new worldwide exhibitions. This interest has also a downside because the international world tends to package them into thematic shows. i.e., from the Middle East or from the Islamic world.
While this kind of labeling provides opportunities for the work to be internationally seen, it tends to corner them into a specific area where it denies the artist of recognition as simply an artist.
For instance, the works of Lara Baladi and Shady El-Noshokaty are always attached to a geographical space. Generally, I really think that this labeling is both dangerous and unhealthy to the artists who courageously refuse to take part in some of these shows.
On the other hand, those who agree still manage to be successful in major centers and they get picked up by galleries abroad not because they come from this part of the world but for the quality of work they are producing.
The curators of these large exhibitions are very informed about the region and they often tell me that they hear the same thing from artists: "Don’t put us into this packaging". But their reply is: "For funding purposes, we need it"!
The financiers refuse to put money into these shows unless it has this categorization.
There are so many artists who managed to step out of these boundaries.
If you "Google" Egyptian artists, you will find them independently exhibiting or collectively in group shows everywhere from Tokyo, South Africa to New York.
Both the first and second wave of artists that passed through the Townhouse gallery has become internationally known. The third wave is more challenging because the opportunities offered in Egypt have dramatically changed. Nowadays, a young artist in his twenties can find his works being viewed by extremely important people in the art world including writers, critics, researchers and curators. If he were in another part of the world, he wouldn’t find the same audience because there are thousands of counterparts competing to have their work seen.
Yet again, this brings up another difficulty. An artist could be young, extremely talented, very articulate, but he still needs more knowledge and experience. That's why we encourage everyone to go to workshops, take up residency abroad and to make connections with other artists before exhibiting their work that will bring light and criticism. Through curatorial practices and art management we can create serious constructive criticism in the Egyptian art community in Egypt and hopefully.
Which medium and practice is most prominent?
Without a doubt, video and photography, which, for me is a shame! I love the recently produced video work coming out of Cairo; visually it's very rich. You only need to scratch the surface and this city leans towards video and photography, yet at the same time lot of these artists are still painting in their studios.
In Australia, which is geographically isolated, artists moved into video but they kept painting and drawing. Paintings coming now are very different from the produced work seven years ago. Going into that whole process of mixed media, has enriched the paintings.
Video Art is extremely promising not only from Egypt but from all over the world. If you look to the wall behind us, you will know that society has affected it in the way it is fractured and battered and worn out. This fatigue is perfectly expressed on video through artists who are concerned with the objects around them. If we go to Lebanon, we are exposed to another type of promising video art produced by artists who are concerned the political situation of their country.
We know of a joint plan to “merge some interests”, especially in the realm of funding and residency-creation, between Townhouse, Lebanon's Ashkal Alwan and Turkey's Platform: Why do you think this step is important at this moment?
Since the year 2000, we have been collaborating with Ashkal Alwan through institutions like Townhouse and through workshops organized by artists in both Cairo and Beirut. Last year, Platform was interested in initializing corporations between Istanbul, Cairo and Beirut. We were on the verge of formalizing this agreement but we were delayed due to the war in Lebanon. Hopefully in 2008, we will see movement not only between these three cities but also in North Africa and the Gulf region as well.
There is another regional cooperation with the Central Gallery in Istanbul with which we have been working for almost a year on major project that will open next November. During this event, we will be exchanging artists between Cairo and Istanbul as well. I have been visiting Amman, Palestine, Syria hoping to build up a regional residential exchanges or a potentially large exhibition in 2008.
Cairo has assumed a major artistic role in Africa and the Middle East because of the cooperation between independent spaces. Egypt's role facilitates artistic relationships between different countries in the region and formalizes them in a non-contractual way. For instance, Townhouse can connect with Makan in Jordan or the Academy of Arts in Palestine.
In the year 2000, you created the “Nitaq” festival that received great acclaim and astounding coverage in publications like Art in America. How did this project come about? And why, despite the undeniable success for two consecutive years, has it disappeared?
Both of the two successive editions of Nitaq have become an important reference point showing everyone how the different spaces in Egypt could work together if they put their egos and personalities aside. Though we succeeded to create a successful festival visited by thousands of people in Downtown Cairo, we lacked the experience and the maturity to carry it off. It would be fabulous if Nitaq could re-emerge, initiated by another institution or a non-commercial space in Egypt. It isn't something I only wish, I do think it can happen.
After Nitaq, we didn’t want this momentum to fade away so we created Photo Cairo that was a regional yet extremely large and complicated project. The people who organized it were young, enthusiastic, extremely educated and prepared to do an enormous amount of research to bring older generations of photographers and pioneers alongside the contemporary ones. It might not have succeeded in the way Nitaq did but it was still extremely important. Photo Cairo 2 was also a regional project and was organized by the same people who had became more experienced. More recently, Photo Cairo 3 took place. It was collaboration between the Contemporary Image Collectors and two separate curators. It brought international artists alongside panel speakers from all over the world. Formalizing the event, we brought up twenty international photographers to make them use the city as creative resource.
How do you see the art life in Alexandria?
Though all the focus is on Cairo, I find what's happening in Alexandria to be cosmopolitan. There are a lot of young people actively working with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina or in independent ateliers like the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, a space that resembles the Townhouse in appearance and was founded by Mona Marzouk. For instance, they managed to do an installation in a public space that the Governor of Alexandria attends and also managed to keep the project running for the for-seeable future.
In the beginning, the priority for us was to give a space for artists to produce and experiment with their work and to engage in dialogue and critique about it. Now, with all the new spaces in Cairo, the focus of The Townhouse as a space has extended to become a place for research, workshop and development programs. I think also that we will have more resident artists visiting to give lectures and presentations in Cairo and Alexandria over the next year.
What are the plans for the next ten years of the townhouse?
The Townhouse has a vision and a mission statement that, I think will change in the next year. We will seek to meet the needs of the arts community and the various communities with we have been working with because Townhouse belongs to the people who made it. Yasser and I are just players of a larger team. The program for the next few months ranges from several shows showcasing Egyptian artists, newcomers, foreigners producing work in Egypt and artists visiting Cairo after their world tour.
As I mentioned previously, if we don’t engage in dialogue with the people who make decisions, we will end up being packaged. We always had a policy in Townhouse: people working here must go out to Turkey, Italy or America as well as every corner of the world as representative of their generation, art practices, careers and their country.
In the first week of December, we will be having the first international auction for Egyptians and foreigners' artist.
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