Wael Shawky
Al Araba Al Madfuna

Opening: 25.8.2012, 17 - 22 h

The Egyptian artist Wael Shawky is a storyteller: historiographical and literary sources form the starting point for his concentrated film narratives, in which he interweaves myths, facts, and fiction. The actors, backdrops, and costumes, music, and text each become self-contained narrative voices and through their interplay, fracture ossified views of history. His poetic staging of historical events allows the concealed backgrounds of current thinking and actions to emerge and enables us to think anew about the past and the present.

Wael Shawky (born in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1971) is the winner of the Ernst Schering Foundation Art Award 2011. The award includes prize money of 10,000 Euros, a solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and a catalog. Since 2005, the Ernst Schering Foundation Art Award has been awarded biannually.

To support their choice out of the 15 artists nominated by international curators, the jury states:

"Wael Shawky's film oeuvre is remarkably impressive due to its consistent development and extraordinary precision: His re-performances of historical and political events ignite unconventional perspectives, which exceed reflections of Egyptian societal structures. He creates images that are crafted with technical mastership and therefore induce an immediate persuasiveness."

For his solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, he has created a new, large-scale work.

The exhibition is curated by Susanne Pfeffer.

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