Archive
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"Who heals the deer when the hunt is over?"
We met the Sinai-born artist Hanan Ramadan in Alexandria, where she spoke about the development of her art and her life. She invited us into her home and her studio. Her work casts a combative yet sensitive light on gender relations in Egypt, both in the art world and in other areas of life. Hanan’s paintings speak of the many women she has met, of their pain, and of their paths toward healing.
One of my teachers (of course a man!) advised me to stop painting suffering women. No one buys paintings of women who look unhappy. Another, also a man, said that only a psychopath would buy my work. Ironically, he later wanted to buy one of my paintings himself.
Art is my weapon; through it I can speak on behalf of women. In my paintings, I depict their lived experiences. During my studies, I moved twelve times and met so many women in the process! I deliberately kept moving in order to meet more and more women. So many friendships! These are the women I continue to paint to this day. You could say I hold them in my hand; my hand remembers their facial features precisely.
Life is not easy for women in Egypt. Many carry injuries from their first wedding night. Here in Egypt, I have to express what I want to say indirectly. One cannot speak freely. There was, for example, Maryam, who was about to get married. I was out in the city with her, buying things for her new apartment. Suddenly she said, ‘Can we stop for a moment?’ She sat down and began to cry. She told me she had breast cancer. That meant she would not be able to have children. It was her secret, because the marriage could have failed because of it. Three years later, I painted her together with a deer and grapes. Grapes stand for motherhood; more generally, they symbolise fertility. The grape is one of the stages of the embryo (called the ‘morula’). For every girl I met during my studies, there is a painting. I know that I painted these pictures because I met them.
The artist Amal Nasr gave me a workspace in her studio; she said that I would become an excellent painter. I owe her so much. But I didn’t want to ask her for materials as well, and I had very little money for paints. So I developed a special monoprint technique. I apply the paints onto a glass plate and let them move and form shapes on their own. Then I use all kinds of materials that can give the image texture—like bubble wrap—pick up the paint, and print it onto paper. The forms that emerge are unlike anything I had ever seen before. I let myself be inspired by what I recognise in them. Often my works have multiple layers, which I print and paint over at intervals of several years.
I often paint nude women with large breasts, like African fertility goddesses. This repeatedly causes problems—for example, recently at an exhibition, where I was supposed to create a mural. They wanted to cover parts of my image. I was once even advised to paint feathers over a woman’s breasts to conceal them. Just imagine that! She is running with a deer—where would the feathers come from? I asked. It is often also the size of the breasts that they dislike. If they were smaller, it would provoke less resistance.
I return again and again to painting the woman with the deer. As a child, I had a recurring dream. In this dream, I imitated an animal that was running. I remember that the hind and front legs of this animal (and therefore my own legs) crossed over each other as it ran. Later, I discovered that this animal was a deer. I also learned that there are people who hunt and kill deer for pleasure—just as men inflict violence on women, for example during sex, simply for their own gratification. That is how the deer became a symbol for me. In one of my paintings, the woman holds a deer—her pain—in her arms. In this way, she tries to defend herself. I associate the running of the deer with healing, movement, and resistance. Who will heal the deer’s wounds after the hunt, I wondered? Only the deer itself can do that. Over time, the woman and the deer in my paintings have increasingly merged into a kind of centaur, a symbol of strength. Healing also lies in the way the women in my images embrace themselves.
At one exhibition, a young woman once stood for a very long time in front of one of these centaurs. Normally, people focus on the details, the painting techniques—but she was clearly absorbed by the work as a whole. Later, she told me that a close friend of hers had died, and that the image gave her strength. On another occasion, a woman cried in front of a painting with a bleeding deer: it reminded her of the frequent blood feuds in her native Upper Egypt. That was when I understood that these paintings are mirrors for women, in which they can see their own stories – stories I may not even know. It is about pain and healing; it reflects something within them. They are looking at themselves. The images can be translated into many different stories.
Silence, Healing, and the Valorization of the Other
Siwa is known as a place of healing. A particular type of tourism has a firm grip on the desert oasis in western Egypt: people come from all over the world in search of spirituality, authenticity, and tranquility. The place also has a strongly exotic character for Egyptians: YouTubers, hippies, and the educated middle class paint a picture of an alternative world where one can escape the stress of contemporary urban life. Of course, this image overlooks a large part of the local reality. The touristification of Siwa leads to displacement and creates a phantasmagorical parallel world.
Siwa was recommended to us again and again because here you can drive onto a sand dune at sunrise and drink tea there. Or you can let yourself be buried up to your neck in the warm sand and lie for several hours in the shade of a tent. You can swim in a healing salt pool that supports your entire body, or explore the mystical ruins of the citadel, which was built entirely from a mixture of clay and sand. Massages and other healing practices are advertised everywhere. An ancient temple that once housed a famous oracle and was visited by Alexander the Great, as well as the “Spring of Cleopatra,” give the place an aura of historical and translocal significance. Egyptian acquaintances told us with shining eyes about the profound silence in Siwa, about the stars in the desert, and about springs that can heal skin diseases. Again and again, people also emphatically mentioned that there is a hotel in Siwa that costs five thousand dollars per night.
This tourism naturally clashes with the local reality, which is marked by poverty and displacement. At the foot of Mount Dakrour, known for a festival that used to be celebrated here every year, we drank tea with an old man. He invited us into a garden and picked mulberries and oranges for us from the trees. We sat on a blanket in the all-pervasive dust while our host told us about the history of the place. He had grown up in this garden; it had belonged to his family. A few years ago, he sold the land to an “Egyptian” — meaning an Egyptian Arab — who is now building a hotel there. (It is hard to imagine that there will ever be enough tourists for all the hotels currently being built in Siwa.) Our host now works for the Egyptian, watering the plants and running a small roadside shop. The inhabitants of Siwa are Amazigh (formerly called Berbers); the town is the westernmost settlement of this indigenous North African population.
The sale of land and the expanding tourism industry have something colonial about them. People from other countries have also settled here, either to enjoy the vastness of the desert or to turn Siwa’s centuries-old exotic reputation into profit. We spoke with a tour guide from Alexandria who was there arranging agreements with local hostels and restaurants. To him, the locals were simply lazy people who did not know how to do business. Reality, of course, looks different. Traditionally, the economy here was based on the hard work carried out in the date palm groves and olive orchards, whose produce was transported by caravans through the desert to the coast. Every family owned enough trees to live from their yield. In addition, there are now enormous salt mines where people from Siwa and Bedouins from the region work. The oasis’s products have been known beyond Egypt for centuries and fetch relatively good prices. But the local population cannot compete with the purchasing power of city dwellers, and many Siwis also place great hopes in tourism.
We crossed Mount Dakrour on foot after turning down dozens of safari offers (“budget safari”). The famous festival associated with the mountain used to bring the entire male population here every October for three days. The men stayed in tents and small mud huts specially built for the occasion: they sang, danced, and cooked over open fires. The women remained in the town and celebrated their own festival. Since COVID, the state has banned the gathering — the reasons remain unclear. Today the mud huts stand abandoned on the far side of the massif, and we heard that only a single person, a foreigner, now lives there. From here, one can look out over one of the two enormous freshwater lakes between which the town lies. A bridge stretches five kilometers to the other side. We walk and walk until someone gives us a ride and drops us off on the opposite shore. That is where the salt mines are — excavators and trucks spread across the scarred plain all the way to the horizon. The army guards the production sites. At night, the entire area even becomes a restricted zone. A soldier leads us to one of the salt pools where tourists (often lightly dressed women from East Asia) bathe. An absurd image, given that the area resembles a gigantic construction site. Back on the street, we meet a boy, perhaps sixteen years old, who works in the mines. He takes us back to town in his truck.
These days, Siwa resembles one continuous wedding celebration — several tents are erected in the alleyways, where hundreds of men gather (gender segregation is strict, and women often wear full veils that do not even reveal the eyes). Here the groom is celebrated, and enormous quantities of rice, meat, and tea are distributed among the guests. We too were invited and hosted, but we had apparently crossed a boundary that usually exists in Siwa: tourists are expected to do tourist things (for example, bathing half-naked in the “Spring of Cleopatra” or driving jeeps down sand dunes). It is obvious that crossing beyond this sphere provokes mixed feelings.
Sinai and the Israelis
We spent the night in a camp at the Red Sea close to where, in the next morning, a ferry would leave to Jordan. Beyond the sea, the shore of Saudi Arabia was visible. Our host and her two partners were from Cairo. They had prepared themselves for one year before they came here to start their first beach camp business. They rented a piece of land and built straw huts on it. After a while, local Bedouins forced them out because, arguably, it was their land and they saw it as their legitimate right to use it for their own enterprises. So our host and her friends went further north and started another camp close to the massive compound of Taba Heights, a ghost town designed for rich people who apparently never arrived there.
Most of their guests are Israelis, which has never created any issues, she said. She believes in a spirit of understanding, as expressed by the ritual of shared meals that take place in their camp every evening. However, they have refused to learn Hebrew – unlike many others in the area. The local Bedouins in particular speak it very well. They had already learned it during the Israeli occupation of Sinai (1967–1982), she said, and they continue to teach it to their children. The Bedouins speak it better than Arabic, she laughs.
The only Jews they do not welcome at the camp are strictly religious Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews). Before arriving, every visitor is asked whether they prefer (a) vegetarian, (b) vegan, or (c) kosher food. This is a test: when someone chooses kosher, our hosts ask how strict they are. If they insist on preparing their own food, bringing their own pans, or even lighting their own fire (because Muslim involvement would render the food non-kosher), they are turned away.
Bedouins, Egyptian urban businesspeople, and Israelis together create spaces where deep relaxation is supposed to set in simply by doing nothing - just watching the waves and the coastline of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel on the other side of the Red Sea. However, an occasional missile fired from Yemen towards Israel can still interrupt the serenity.
A Return of Eyesight
Palestinian female fighters (Mohamed Taman, exhibited in Cairo)
The entire neighbourhood seems to have specialised in selling wheelchairs. Mohamed Taman picks us up near an abandoned factory that had also produced wheelchairs. Today, artists use the half-derelict building at very low rents. In the courtyard there is a tiny mosque; the other tenants rarely show up. This is where Mohamed has what he calls his colour laboratory. For decades, he has been experimenting with chemical reactions that create colours and forms which the artist himself can only partially control. He keeps the recipe to himself so that the value of the paintings he has already sold does not decline.
He demonstrates his technique to us. He decorates a beige blob of paint on a wooden panel – slightly dried after a few moments – with circles of golden-yellow, blue, and turquoise dots. They continue to move, more and more slowly, partly merging, partly forming sharp boundaries, before they crystallise. The colours have their own opinions, he explains. They fight each other – the ones that came first and the later ones. It’s a war of dynasties. Or like saltwater and freshwater when they flow into each other. Ultimately, only about 30 per cent of his artistic intention is reflected in the paintings, he says; the rest is determined by the colours themselves. Time is part of my art. If I want to paint a picture today, I must have prepared the colours for it two years in advance. It is largely a matter of science; he would need to do much more research, but in Egypt it is hardly possible to obtain the right equipment. Nevertheless, over the years he has made progress in developing his colours. In the past, it took two to three weeks for the paintings to dry; today it takes only 24 hours. However, that is only the surface: for the substance to dry completely still takes a full month. The colours are made from natural ingredients – oil and dust. Every painting is unique because I can never fully control how the colours are composed. I mix them directly on the canvas, like Chinese food cooked directly over the fire.
Mohamed has studied Palestinian traditional costumes in order to preserve them for future generations, because the history of this people is being erased, he says. Each region in Palestine has its own clothing and its own embroidery techniques, which he tries to depict as accurately as possible. Each woman in the picture above represents a different area of Palestine. At the same time, his technique allows certain areas to remain quite unspecific. The face of the mother holding a child in her arms (below) is not that of a particular person, but a generic, iconographic representation of motherhood. It also evokes the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, who was born in Palestine.
Unfortunately, the government can’t stand me, Mohamed says with a laugh. I’ve been on a blacklist since I took part in the 2011 revolution. The current government doesn’t like anyone who was involved back then – it’s a military regime. They don’t want civilians to have any kind of power. They’re afraid of a new revolution. In the years before the 2011, I was famous in Egypt! But since they put me on this list, I can no longer exhibit – only occasionally in private galleries.
I’m not in danger. It’s more like being a rat in a cage. They make it impossible for me to earn money. So I have to do whatever I can – other jobs – in order to keep making art. I lived in France for two years and received support for my work. In Egypt, the government isn’t interested in art at all. Most artists today stay out of politics and no longer express their opinions – and that’s why they still receive funding.
My father was a general in the army, completely different from me. He was on the other side. If you’re on the side of the regime or even in the military, you have everything: a salary, health insurance and so on. Civilians have no rights. For years they collected taxes from me but gave nothing in return. Sometimes, when I was ill, I had no money for the hospital, so I just stayed at home and thought: either I will live or I will die. Those are the two wars I fight: scientific research on colours and survival.
Mohamed often depicts women, and sometimes people whose gender is not clearly identifiable. There is a reason for this, he says: nowadays gender roles are becoming blurred. Men are often no longer distinguishable from women. His paintings are a critical reflection on this development, which he views negatively. A similar ambiguity appears in his depictions of women who smoke: he says this used to be normal, especially in Egypt in the 1930s – but is it right? Mohamed Taman’s political stance is often difficult to grasp. He is part of the religious opposition in Egypt, even if that is not always obvious. During the protests against El-Sisi’s rise to power in 2013, he was hit in the eye by a bullet, where it became lodged without penetrating his brain. His eye was completely destroyed, and the projectile was never removed. Later he was arrested and spent many months in prison under extremely harsh conditions. Sometimes, he says, he has to collect and sell rubbish in order to survive and continue making art. Somehow, he has always managed to continue his work – and, in what seems like a kind of miracle, his eye has completely regenerated on its own.
A Palestinian mother with her child (Mohamed Taman, exhibited in Cairo).
Mohamed Taman in his "colour laboratory", in front of a painting of his late wife.
Mohamad Abla studied art in Alexandria and in various places across Europe. He spoke to us about naked models in Egyptian art schools, his encounters with Beuys and Hundertwasser and – he had been one of the first art therapists in Zürich - about art's healing powers.
I used to have an atelier on a small island here in Cairo, that was 25 years ago. There, I worked a lot about landscape and especially the nile. But the government threw me out of that place, so I moved here. Today, I paint many of the memories from that time. Boats, people on the Nile. Things I always wanted to paint, but never did. I collect the stories of that island. In that time, life was very simple.
Mohamed shows us a picture of several colorful figures in movement.
These are children who have grown up now. I know them, I know their stories. They were children of fishermen on the island.
Then he brings a couple of smaller pictures of animals, plants, and people.
This is what I called the Silkroad Projekt. I collected stories from Kasakhstan, Uzbekistan, all these Asiatic countries. Fairytales. And I painted them. The pictures are collages made from these stories.
We move into another room in Mohamed’s spacious, chaotic atelier located in the midst of bustling downtown Cairo. A large painting shows newspaper headlines from the time when protests against the Mubarak regime began. “No space for poor people”, reads one. Later, Mohamed sits in an armchair, in front of a low table full of art materials and rubbish, his paintings behind him. Speaking in English, he begins to reflect about different phases of his life.
My father, he didn't like that I study art. Because he wants me to be in the military school. And I went for the exam for the military school, and I escaped. Because I didn't like the idea. And then he told me, if you go on studying art, that means you don't come back home. Go live your life. So I had to do this, and spent the whole five years studying. And working, and so on. But yeah, it was very good. I mean, I studied art, and I got my first solo exhibition in 1978. I had just finished art school. And during this exhibition, I got a scholarship to Spain. So I went to Madrid for six months to study in San Fernando Academy.
Later, I went to Switzerland and Germany. I met Baselitz, I met Immendorff, I met all those names. Even I went to study with Beuys at that time. Just for one day. I didn't understand what they mean. I went there, to Düsseldorf, the academy, I said, I want to study with Beuys. They said, okay, come. And I said, okay, this is my portfolio, I want Mr. Beuys to see what I'm doing. I met his students, Walter Dahn and all those names, good students. So they told me, he doesn't care if you paint or not, he accepts you. And then, on the first day, there was nothing, the studio was empty. Nothing, a computer, a big computer at that time, a big printer. And they were writing letters for the Green Party. Social work. So he told me that, no, we don't teach art here, we teach life. I said, but I know life well enough. That was 1979, 1980, something like that. And I said, no, I came to paint. Because, I mean, the issues they were talking about, they were far from me. It was about Umwelt, I mean environment and such things. And the problem with dictatorship. I mean, it seemed like local problems. I didn't have a relation to it. I said, Mr. Beuys, it doesn't fit to me, I want to paint. So I went to the printmaking department in Düsseldorf. I stayed for a while, I learned some techniques. Later I regretted it, of course, because later on I discovered that Beuys was important.
But later on I went to Vienna, I studied with Arnold Freimer. He was doing photo, just drawing photos. And I met Hundertwasser also just for one day. I didn't like him, because he came naked to the studio. It was the first day, I think, he came only to shock us or something like that.
For us at the art school, you painted models, but male models, until the second or the third year. Then we were very excited, two years waiting for a naked woman. It was something very special when the teacher came and she said: Next week we will have a model. So I was very nervous. Because we were not allowed to see the other studios of older students. We were not allowed to look. So it was very special. And then came the young lady and she started to take off her clothes. And we were standing, of course, like this. And we had some fanatic religious students who said, oh, that is a scandal, that is the end of the world, women naked in front of us, and such things. And some people refused to draw her. But I liked the idea very much and I started to work a lot. The model as well, she liked me very much and she was standing for me after the school to draw her. It was a very good time. And then came a wave of fanaticism one year later and they stopped having models. The whole art school in Egypt was forbidden since that time, from 1977. And it is like this. So it is was interesting time.
I work a lot because I have nothing else to do. I work and I fight with the government. I used to be very political for a while, for a period, but now I'm not. I was in a committee who wrote the constitution for Egypt in 2013. It was about the law of life, everything, about everything, about the relation between people and the authorities and so on. Human rights and women's rights and men's rights and children's rights. It was about everything. I spent three months, day and night, working on this project. But now I'm fed up with politics and such things.
I went to Switzerland, it was 1981. By accident I was living beside the Jung Institute. So they were giving courses and I heard once that somebody was giving a course about art therapy. So I went there and I liked the idea very much. And they advised me to study one year psychology so that I can understand more. And then I had my own studio for art therapy in Zürich. For one and a half years, it was a very good experience.
I was pioneer, it was the only studio in Switzerland at that time. I didn't know what I'm doing exactly so I had to invent. So my idea was if I'm healing people through art, there should be no other language. It's only art, no talking. And also because I didn't speak the language very well so I thought it's okay. I was not talking to the patients. I was only doing this with art. So I gave them the right space; it was a big room like this one. In the middle were colors. The whole walls were covered with paper. And then they can do whatever they want. And I watch and I can see if they are stuck in something. So I go and I try to give them something, add anything or something like that. And when they leave, I start to look at the painting and I had one assistant, she was a physiotherapist. So we were talking about the cases after they left. So she tells me, I think she was watching because she was there, she was present to watch, only to watch, not to talk. So she watched people and then she told me: take care of this woman, so and so, this man has such problems, and so I think the issue is that... She gives me some help and then I consider this and then when they come again, I can... So this was it.
They came several times till they say we are okay. And nearly all of them they were okay in the end. They said, thank you, now I understand. It's a problem and now I can solve it. And I can do this myself. Although they came through the hospital, I mean they were sent by a clinic. So, it was a good time.
It affects you also. Because if you talk with people about problems, if you come near to other's problems, it's not so easy. You will be affected also. It takes time and you have to really be very careful to have the space, distance.
But for me, when I don't feel good, I paint. So I know, I know that. That's for me, it is a kind of healing also.
How would you describe the potential for healing in art?
I can tell you a story about one of the patients. Because it was very, very clear. It was one of the clearest experiences. The doctor from the psychiatry department in Zürich told me: I will send you somebody, try to do something because I cannot help. That man was a pilot at Swiss Air. I said, okay, a pilot. A Pilot at Swiss Air, so I was expecting a very handsome... somebody came and he looked like a clochard, very dirty and really like somebody you meet in the street. He said, Dr. Heinrich told me to come to you, I don't know why.
I said, okay, here we paint.
He said, I don't like painting.
I said, okay. Not everybody here likes painting, but they still try.
No.
There was a woman there; I said, look at her, she is concentrating, she likes what she is doing.
I cannot do this.
I said, okay, try.
He came and put some white paint on a white paper and he was doing white on white. Okay, he finished. I'm going, he said.
I said, okay, can you come tomorrow at the same time?
Then he came, second day, same time. He was alone. Then he started to paint, making circles on white, circles on white, circles on white.
I said, okay.
I'm leaving.
Okay, can you come tomorrow at the same time? He came. Then he started to do this again. So I just threw blue color in his white without telling him. So he started to work and then started to paint blue circles, blue circles. And then he started to think about the circles because he was doing them without thinking. Then he started to think about big circles, small circles, something like this.
I said, okay, come tomorrow, same time.
He said, yes, okay. And then he started to paint a sky with blue, blue on white. He didn't change the color, blue on white. And then came another day. He started to paint a clear sky with some clouds. And then he told me, now I know. The only love in my life is to fly, nothing else. I'm going tomorrow to write to Switzerland that I'm going back.
I said, okay.
And then three days or four days later he came, completely different, riding his bike and wearing a very nice sports uniform.
Hi Mohamed, how are you? I will be back in Switzerland next week.
I said, okay.
I bought a lot of colors and I have room for painting in my apartment, he said. By the way, my wife thanks you very much. And he disappeared.
Why he had he stopped flying?
Because he was fed up, he was working, working. He likes to fly, but he did too much overworking. And then he, all of a sudden, didn't like to fly anymore. And he didn't know, he was not feeling well. And he didn't know why, so he thought his wife is the problem. So he had problems with his wife, problems with his social environment, with everybody. And he started to look for new surroundings. So he spent, I think, some months of doing nothing, just walking the street, meeting the wrong people and so on. So it was, I didn't really want to analyze, but for me it was clear that if I could help, that was really very quick and it was really very effective.
So he found his way by painting.
By painting, yes. He didn't receive an analysis of the painting. Because I don't analyze anything for them. I analyze for myself, but not for them. I let them if they want to talk. But I don't, I didn't ask them for an explanation. Mostly they explained it to me on the last day. When they wanted to leave, they said, don't you want to know where I was and where I am now? I said, okay, if you like to tell me. So some of them, they were telling it to me. And some of them said, okay, you can see my painting. It's completely different. You see how it was and now how it is. Something like this. So it was a very good experience.
You said that painting almost means healing to you. What is it in painting that heals you?
You know, if you paint, I mean, if you do anything creative, you don't know exactly where it's coming from. And doing art, it is a kind of controlling what's inside you, putting it in order for a while. Of course, you can't do it for a long time. It's during this process of painting. You are putting things in order. And you are transforming what is not material into a material. Yeah. And this is a very special feeling. Because you have a lot of lines, circles in your head. And when you paint, you are putting them in order. And this order, we translate it, and I feel good, I'm relieved. But it is like this because you put ideas and thoughts, contradictions of things, put them in a line for a while. And that's the story about doing art.
So art is to heal yourself and when you do art, you also heal others who look at your art.
Yeah. Because it's very important for people to look at art even if they don't agree very much with it. But when you see a painting, you are part of it.
