Modernist Women of Egypt Exhibition
The exhibition looks at how Egypt’s unique engagement in the early 20th century with issues of nationalism, womanhood, activism, traditions and multiculturalism produced a substantial environment for women artists to develop.
The emergence of female figures in Egypt’s public discourse has been propounded to be in connection with Egyptian political nationalism. Within this context, the narrative on Egyptian women artists is comparably one of the many ways to witness the evolution of the history of modern Egypt. The women’s emancipation was distinct and crucial in shaping a new Egyptian identity, a requisite even, that was also symbolized by the artist Mahmoud Mukhtar’s “Nahdat Misr” (Egyptian Awakening) where a statue of woman was depicted unveiling while standing erect next to a monumental sphinx. The statue, completed in 1928, represented Egypt’s unyielding present along with its one of a kind past. Likewise, it is impossible to ignore the effect of the country’s vigorous women’s movement in the early and mid 20th century, led by the prominent feminist figures Huda Shaarawi, Nabawiyya Musa and Doria Shafik. Artists of the time saw women beginning to mobilize for the first time, becoming politically and socially active on a large scale, debating their own role in the family structure and in the public sphere in parallel with Egypt’s aspirations for sovereignty and own renascence through the persistence of its citizens.
