Over the course of five years starting in 2010, Egyptian-American artist Wael Shawky created an epic film trilogy on the Crusades, as seen from the medieval Muslim point of view, represented on screen in the form of a puppet show.
Now, a piece of that remarkably rich and deep visual world is on view as part of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s “Focus” exhibition series. It includes one of the three Cabaret Crusades films, along with 28 new drawings based on the films, and a single bronze sculpture.
In the right-hand gallery is the hourlong Path to Cairo (2012), whose timeline spans from 1099 (the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the First Crusade) to 1147 (the beginning of the Second Crusade).
We see the colorful intrigues, machinations and romantic subplots as the Arab rulers respond to the ominous advance of the Franks. The film is constructed as a series of episodes that viewers can dip in and out of. According to the artist, it’s not necessary to watch the whole thing from start to finish in order to get something out of it.
All the drama is reinforced by the expressive soundtrack of soulful fijiri vocal music from Bahrain, which sounds a little bit like a Middle Eastern version of Mississippi Delta blues. Using male voices, humming, hand-claps and drums, the fijiri singers create a timeless, primal and intimate accompaniment to the action on screen.
In the other two galleries, the intricate drawings and sculpture flesh out some of the details glimpsed in the film, highlighting them for closer study.
Part of what makes Shawky’s work absorbing is the way that he defamiliarizes his materials — using them in novel or unusual ways.
In Cabaret Crusades, he was careful not to use anything that would look too much like a stereotypical image of “Arab culture.” So, for The Path to Cairo, he employed the professional ceramists at the École de Céramique in Aubagne, France, whose workshops created 110 marionettes in the traditional French santon technique, used for Catholic Nativity plays since the 18th century.
Here, those Nativity-style figures portray the Muslim inhabitants and rulers of Aleppo and Cairo, under siege by the Frankish armies. (For the other two Cabaret Crusades films, he used African masks and Venetian Murano glassware.)
Shawky is well-placed to tell old stories from a new perspective. The 50-year-old artist was born in Alexandria, Egypt, where he completed his undergraduate degree before moving to Philadelphia for graduate study. Today, he lives and works in both places, and he says that he prefers the creative environment in those medium-sized cities to the noise and crowds of New York or Cairo.
During his childhood, his family lived for a time in the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca, where he saw how the oil business had created an incongruous combination of strict, traditional Arabic culture with American capitalism that stimulated visions of wealth, power and development among the people in the Gulf Arab countries.
His research for the film project began with Lebanese historian Amin Maalouf’s landmark 1983 book, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, which led him to the writings by 11th- and 12th-century Muslim historians and geographers that he used to create the scripts for the films.
It could be argued that given the extent of U.S. involvement in the Middle East, Americans have a moral obligation to try to understand the perspectives of the people who live there. On that front, Shawky’s work certainly instigates morally urgent and far-reaching reflections on conflict, conquest and civilization.
However, his films are also a lot of fun to watch. The ceramic figurines have a strange, even bizarre-looking appearance, while a puppet show by nature feels more fantastical and otherworldly than watching human actors.
Indeed, Shawky says that he is less concerned with the concrete facts of history than with how memory and imagination shape people’s dreams and desires. In that respect, his treatment of the Crusades is as timely as ever.
Details
“Focus: Wael Shawky” continues through July 25 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St., Fort Worth. Open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. General admission $16; seniors, military and first responders $12; students $10; under 18 free; half-price Sundays and free Fridays. 817-738-9215. themodern.org.
