The Practice of Huda Lutfi:
Umm Kulthum, Icon of Resistance and of a Nation

Collaborative Authorship

Introduction

Painter and installation Cairo-based artist Huda Lutfi belongs to a wave of artists who are successful on several fronts; her works are solicited in France, Cairo, UAE, London: private collectors, auction houses, galleries, critics and curators.
She has been teaching Arab Muslim cultural history as well as mixed media art at the American University in Cairo for several years, teaching painting to street and refugee children, a side activity that resulted in several exhibits in Cairo. Her training as a historian has influenced her work as an artist, juxtaposing historical past and present, as well as traversing and fusing cultural boundaries. In her latest exhibits she references Egypt’s cultural and popular artistic traditions, trying to integrate these traditions into contemporary art practices. In her attempts to do so, she works with mixed mediums, using painting, text, collage, recycled photographs, found objects, assemblage, and installation. In her exhibit Found in Cairo (2003) she worked with the medium of the found object to depict the image of the city in which she lives. And in her most recent exhibit ‘Arayis (2006) in Cairo, she worked with the medium of the doll, referencing the popular and rich artistic tradition of doll making in Egypt and elsewhere. In her works she addresses issues of cultural and gender identity, as well as issues of globalization and its influence on local Egyptian culture.

The following text is a tripartite dialogue, perhaps trialogue, between the artist and two of the most respectable Egyptian academic scholars: Cairo-based Samia Mehrez and New York-based Dina Ramadan.

Conversation

Dina: I was thinking about the Umm Kulthum images that you are working on, and what you are saying about your playing with and subverting of the image of Umm Kulthum.  So my first question is:  is this the same Umm Kulthum that we saw in the Found in Cairo exhibit?  For example, is this the same figure, or the same treatment of the figure?  How has your relationship to this character changed if at all?  Someone whom you have been working closely on for let's say four or five years. 

Huda:  More than that, I still remember the first collages I did of her, some of which I gave away to friends, and which date back to the early 90’s.  So my fascination with Umm Kulthum goes back to my earliest works.  Somehow she always appears in the exhibitions that I have had over the past 12 years. What always attracted me to her are not simply her talent but her presence and her energy.  It is the kind of presence that emanates from her that is so special. There have been many talented female singers in Egypt that belonged to her generation, but in my view, none of them possessed that kind of presence that was so seductive and that so captivated the audience. I remember as a child my parents and their friends held special home sessions in order to listen to her concerts on the radio, and that stuck to my memory. Later when I explored her biographical history I grew to admire her more, for she emerged from a modest rural background and carved for herself the career of a diva who is admired by people in the Arab speaking regions as well as the world at large.  She is like my muse, she always inspires my work, for how long I don’t know, but her images keep coming up in my work and they keep changing as well.

Dina:  How has this relationship changed?  How much do you think that your most recent Umm Kulthum work is a departure from or a continuation of the earlier Umm Kulthum?  How does she evolve? 

Huda:  I remember that in my first exhibition I used one of Umm Kulthuum’s images, which was enclosed within a frame.  She was framed along with other women.  So there was this idea of women being framed, restricted. For me Umm Kulthum is primarily a feminine symbol and I depicted her as a feminine figure that is framed. Even though I don’t use her only as a figure of Egyptian or Arab nationalism, I may also chose to do so in my own way. A little bit of “strategic essentialism” or “sentimentalism” might be useful here, useful as a force of resistance against the increasing erosion of local cultural expressions and icons.

Later on I used her as a feminine figure of learning and searching, a sort of teacher, or sage.  This is an image that continues to come back in my work. One of my new works in Zan’it al-Sittat exhibition for the Thirdline, references her as a sage, a much-needed role in societies that have become more and more materialistic.  She is depicted as a Buddha figure in this installation, but there is an ironical twist that disrupts the image, for the teacher appears enclosed in a wire cage.

Earlier I depicted her image in a book format, which expresses the following Arabic text: "I’d like to say what I feel without fear.”
I come back to this again in one of my 2008 works, entitled the Book of Songs. Her images are juxtaposed with Arabic texts of her songs. Ultimately I use her image as a medium to express what I want to say, it is personal.

In the Found in Cairo exhibition she appears as a mummy, signifying the eternal life force of the feminine.  But the mummy image is paradoxical because it can also signify a state of stagnation, an appropriate symbol alluding to what may be happening in the social and cultural scene in Egypt.  
Thus as a mummy she may be the eternal feminine, the living force behind the constant appearances of the universe, but she may be the Egyptian nation that has become stagnant, or mummified and unable to get out of its stagnation. It is interesting to relate an anecdote here about the mummy symbol.  I also made a mummy of my mother’s image, who is still alive, as well as one of my deceased father. The first reaction I got from my mother was a literal one, why did you mummify me? She asked me, and then said, I am not dead yet!

Dina:  What about nostalgia here?  I also wanted to ask about using the image of Umm Kulthum as such a prevalent, or over represented image.  How do you take that image and say something new or different?  Or make an intervention with an image that is already so overburdened with representation.
How have you struggled with getting the message out of this image that before you even start is already laden with so many different ideas?  Just her face has so many connotations for people that it's difficult to even break through that.  I think that it is very a brave step to try to say something new about something that has already been so...

Huda:  Yes one can say that it is a nostalgic kind of kitsch especially that there is definitely an emotional charge in using the image of Umm Kulthum.   In the project that I am working on now for the Thirdline show, I work with images that evoke the cultural and spatial restrictions imposed on women’s movement and contribution to society at large. Here I am using Umm Kulthum as a feminist kitsch symbol. However it is a kind of kitsch that is punctured by humour, irony and paradox.   In several of these pieces she stands as the statue of liberty, bearing its torch. But there is an ironical touch to this image, for Suma as the statue of liberty is standing on one leg only. She is represented here as a lame feminine figure of liberty, exposing the handicap that she suffers. I think the use of irony, humour or sarcasm is important here for it does not allow us to take this kitsch symbol of liberty seriously, rather it gives us reason to laugh and to question things.

 In the same series on the mother of liberty, Umm Kulthum is depicted standing barefoot on a grid of iron nails, once again signifying the difficulties women are going through in their daily lives. In another piece she is holding the torch but stands framed within what looks like an iron/silver window grid. Here I sort of go back to the idea of being framed, framed in a restrictive role.  The notion of bodily restriction is ironically evoked in another piece of the mother of liberty series. However the restriction is not caused by being enclosed in a frame but by being wrapped in wire.  This depiction is meant to evoke irony and humour as well, for despite the wire that is wrapped around her body and which restricts her bodily movement, she is wearing a pair of running shoes, ready to run!

Many of the Umm Kulthum pieces that I am doing for my coming exhibition Zan’it al-Sittat make use of the multiple arms, there is a constant repetition of the arm as image. The arms become more prominent than the legs or the feet, which was the case in my earlier works.  Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I broke my right arm last summer, and I felt very restricted and I couldn't do anything and so unconsciously it came out in the work.
 
The appearance of the arms may be something personal and may have to do with my own restricted state at the time. So it has to do with the emotional, rather than the conceptual.  But then there is always the idea of the Indian goddess, the feminine life force with multiple arms, which appears in the religious kitsch of Indian culture.  In these works with multiple arms, and which I refer to as Suma’s Mandalas, I use the Indian notion of the eternal circle, the mandala.  Once again I want to express the idea that the feminine has much potential, symbolized by the multiple arms. It is like calling attention to that feminine potential which is not adequately used in our culture as well as all cultures at large.

I primarily use Umm Kulthum as a symbol of humanity at large.  A symbol of the human figure that is restricted, and if I am speaking about the feminine restrictive role, I am indirectly speaking about the male restrictive role as well.  But I am reversing the traditional patriarchal representation of the human image; instead I am using the feminine.  And I am saying: she is restricted, she is crying out for change, to be free.

Dina:  How do you avoid beating a dead horse?  How did you approach that project?

Samia:  Woman as nation.  To follow up on what Dina started.  You are struggling with the fact that there have been many other women in other media who have worked with woman as a nation.  You chose to use Umm Kulthum. Even as you describe her in these different guises, she still represents, to a great extent, woman as nation. 

Huda:  Well one way of breaking out of the stereotypical, is where Umm Kulthuum’s image is used to expose an oppressive situation, as I have shown above. I use her image to play the role of the critic as well, as someone who exposes some of the injustices and oppression that is going on in our society.  So one of my new pieces makes reference to the prevalence of violence in the region, hiding behind the noble cause of democracy.  I used her image with military airplanes flying in the horizon. The piece is ironically entitled: Democracy is Coming.  She is watching what is going on but her eye-pupils have gone white with shock, apprehension and anxiety, and she has this halo around her head that says: “Democracy is Coming.”  So in a way I am using her image to express a stance of resistance and sarcasm, vis a vis what is happening in a global political situation dominated by the powerful.  

Also, in one of the new installations entitled House Bound, Umm Kulthum appears along with a large number of women, she does not occupy a position of prominence here, she is just one among the many women depicted, she is almost unnoticed in this crowd of women. The piece tries to expose the prevalent gender discourse demanding women to stay at home. Umm Kulthum is really my muse, a strong presence that may inspire the viewer to look and to listen to what the visual image may want to say.

 

*Published with permission from the artist.
The rest of the conversation can be followed in the book about the artists, to be released in due time during the next Art Dubai 09.

 
 
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