Lot 54: CHANT AVEDISSIAN (EGYPTIAN, B. 1951) Scenes of Egypt, Rural signed ‘CHANT A

CHANT AVEDISSIAN (EGYPTIAN, B. 1951) Scenes of Egypt, Rural signed ‘CHANT AVEDISSIAN’ (lower centre right) pigment, gum arabic and fabric on cardboard 98 x 59in. (249 x 150cm.) Executed in 1994-1995

EXHIBITED: London, Rose Issa Projects, Green: A Spring Hanging, 2012.

LITERATURE: R. Issa (ed.), Chant Avedissian: Cairo Stencils, London 2006 (illustrated in colour, p. 97). Born in Cairo with Armenian roots, Chant Avedissian had a transnational education in Montreal and Paris, later returning to Egypt in in 1980 where he dabbled with textiles and photography. At frst he worked closely with renowned architect Hassan Fathy, who was connected with the rural communities and the craft in Egyptian traditions and had a major infuence on the architecture of the poor. Avedissian documented many of Fathy’s constructions in Upper then Lower Egypt with photography. Similarly to his mentor, Avedissian consequently blurred the boundaries between high art and folk art. In the present seminal work entitled Scenes of Egypt, Rural, Avedissian produces a captivating scene in a fantastical manner that is representative of Egypt of the 1950s, which was an emerging socialist nation under President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Charged with numerous symbols of an Ancient Egyptian and Pharoanic visual lexicon from a social, economic and political point of view, Avedissian pushes the boundaries of appreciation of popular culture. Avedissian’s works from this rural and urban series, part of his larger Cairo stencils series spanning twenty years from 1991, are rich with cultural images, patterns and overlapping motifs of the rural and the progressive urbanisation visible with the electrical cables and the more modernised buildings. In parallel, Avedissian also produced Scenes of Egypt, Urban with an insightful comparable development to the present work. The artist bridges the traditional and the modern through technique and content afluent with popular culture with subtle humour and wit: the stencils and juxtaposition of the diferent vignettes are typical of street banners and signage from popular culture and depict Avedissian’s inspiration from the legendary Egyptian movie industry and its celebrated idols. In reference to the vintage posters that used to cover the streets of Cairo and at a time when mass production and consumerism were rising, Avedissian responds with such landscapes flled with irony and charged interpretations, whilst simultaneously celebrating the development of a new contemporary visual language. Icons of the countryside such as domestic animals like dogs and cats and some stray dogs, baskets (traditional qofas used in North African villages for transporting grocery from the market) and fragments of rural architecture are scattered around the composition. More domestic objects typical of rural daily life such as a broom and traditional musical instruments are juxtaposed throughout the work. In the centre, a woman villager sits, her eyes fxed on a primitive sewing machine, lit with a bedside lamp. ‘Girls from the village’ in Arabic is stencilled across this scene, amusingly alluding to the prejudices attributed to country girls and a black frieze underlines it, reminiscent of ancient hieroglyphs of the Pharaohs era. More Arabic stencils are visible in random directions, referring to Egyptian regions and arch 3/4 ological sites and some modern Latin alphabet serving to spell Arabic words for door or for the hand-made mud brick paying homage to Fathy’s basis unit for all vernacular constructions. Similarly, ‘BOBBI’ is repeated humorously referring to dog and ‘OTTA’ to cat, colloquial terms common in rural Egypt. The landscape is further enriched with countryside symbols such as lemons widespread in Egyptian agriculture and the materials used such as recycled cardboard and natural Arabic gum refect Avedissian’s belief in the ephemeral and his penchant for tradition and his beloved nation that are inherent to the period, punctuated with hieroglyphic stylisation this Egyptian heritage is further exemplifed in what appears to be frieze-patterned sections adopting an earthy colour palette that are assembled on the cardboard. Layers of the past seem to accumulate throughout with a palette also rich with Mediterranean colours, a region to which Avedissian grew strongly attached to. Imposing and engulfng in its sheer size, the present work is a combination of fascinating cultures that, in turn, have infuenced Avedissian: Arab architecture, baroque and foral motifs of Ottoman textiles and Asian culture and calligraphy. The work is also a fusion of artistic techniques such as printmaking and stencilled image repetition that refect and reference his studies and craftsmanship rife in his Egyptian-Armenian heritage.

PROVENANCE: Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner.