Wael Shawky - I am Hymns of the New Temples
WAEL SHAWKY
I am Hymns of the New Temples
Karantina, August 31, 2023 – February 17, 2024
beirut
Press text
Drawing inspiration from olden Roman and Greek theatre traditions, the comedy and tragedy performed in the amphitheater ruins becomes the formal skeleton through which the actors narrate Greek myths in Arabic. The action is set within a long-gone era, but the characters become part of another, more ancient story, underpinning the immaterial bridges between civilizations and cultures and their mutual influences. They tell us the tale of the Egyptian Isis, and how she somehow came into being as the descendant of Greek gods. The goddess, who resurrects her husband Osiris after his assassination, is worshiped as the divine mother and was believed to help the dead enter the afterlife in Egyptian mythology. In the plethora of Hellenistic deities, however, she is represented as Zeus’ wife, while Osiris, ruler of Egypt, becomes her son. Later on, Christian iconography of the Mother of God with her child Jesus is said to trace its origins back to the depiction of Isis with her son Horus. As Hesiod writes in his Theogony, the emergence of the ancient mythical cosmos is the result of a multicultural stroke of luck, a first great moment in Western intellectual history that happened around the Aegean Sea, with the coming together of traditional streams from very different early cultures.
Bronze sculptures
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
