"Why Not?” is the kind of art exhibition that requires more than one visit. The show, which opened on 7 February and runs until 11 March at the Palace of Arts at the Opera House, features work by more than 40 artists, both well established and up-and-coming. “Why Not?” features murals, metal sculptures, portrait photographs, video art, and massive installations. Gallery fatigue is, it seems, inevitable.
But if you get exhausted before reaching the end of the labyrinthine path through the Palace of Arts, you risk missing one of the most exciting and interesting exhibits in the whole show: Ganzeer’s “Slip of the Tongue.”
Ganzeer is the alias of Mohamed Fahmy, a young artist who also works as a graphic designer. His show, “Slip of the Tongue,” is a series of paintings and vinyl printouts pasted on windows and walls. The common theme in the exhibit is, appropriately enough, the human tongue. “With a tongue, I can do good or I can do evil,” Ganzeer says. “I can tell so many stories with the tongue.”
When you first enter “Slip of the Tongue,” you are in a circular room above the entrance to the Palace of Arts. A large window faces out onto the Opera House complex. It has been covered in clear vinyl, giving the effect of stained glass. Two faces look at each other and from them come massively long pink tongues that snake around the window, creating a frame. Inside these tongues are a series of images that vaguely suggest the kind of religious iconography common in stained glass, but with a decidedly different feeling, one that is more disturbing, more edgy, more contemporary. The other four windows in the room are covered in similar “stained glass.”
A separate room features Ganzeer’s paintings. To enter, you pass through a door that has been refashioned as the mouth of a huge face with bulging, bloodshot eyes, and a massive head of hair composed of an urban scene. While the face feels a bit hastily constructed—especially compared to the cohesiveness of the rest of the exhibit—it helps to set the tone of Ganzeer’s show, which is playful and cartoonish. As you step through the doorway, you cross a wooden ramp that has been painted pink to match the rest of the room—a big tongue.
“I don’t like how a lot of art shows are often limited to this white cube and a bunch of drawings,” says Ganzeer, explaining his decision to turn the second room into a mouth. If this is a common problem, Ganzeer has found a solution. The bright pink walls create a sense of energy and purpose to the show. The room itself becomes part of the exhibit.
In the pink room are five sets of paintings, each prominently featuring the tongue. One set shows two women facing each other from their own panels. From one woman’s mouth come some creatures that look like a cross between a rabbit and a butterfly. From the other woman’s mouth come bats. On a panel in the middle, the two flying creatures battle each other.
These paintings are representative of Ganzeer’s style, which is heavily influenced by comic books. Ganzeer says he grew up reading comics and used to dream of creating his own.
In another piece, black ink over a cardboard-colored background, a figure that resembles the ancient Egyptian god Horus cranes his neck in from out of frame and releases his tongue into a huge pile of what can be nothing other than feces. A fork picks up a piece of the god’s tongue. In the next frame, a middle-class family stands around eating sandwiches, presumably made from the substance that came from Horus’ mouth.
Ganzeer suggests that the tongue is a way of exploring the human condition. If this is the case, it is not entirely clear what he thinks of humanity, but it is certainly something playful, and at the same time disturbing.
“Slip of the Tongue” is part of the “Why Not?” exhibit at the Cairo Opera House Palace of Arts. The Palace of Arts is open everyday but Friday, 10 AM to 2 PM and 5:30 PM to 10 PM. The show will run until 11 March.
