“The choices are half-conscious, half-subconscious. Somet.mes s you pick a drawing because it’s obviously aggressive- it was meant to lie- so you do it. I did it to emphasize the lie. Just so you understand the lie, by doing a stencil of it, or a photo of it, or exhibiting it, whatever. But the stencil, it’s a façade, a fake façade, because it looks like a painting and it talks about something quite horrible, something quite dramatic. A few of the stencils are like that, a few are dramatic, but it doesn’t show because it has color and it looks like a painting.”
Saheba Al Galala was taken from a photograph of the royal couple of King Farouk and his second wife Queen Nariman, the penultimate monarchs of Egypt. Farouk I of Egypt (r.1936-1952) was first married to aristocrat Safinaz Suficar, a diplomatic union which lasted ten years and left no male heir to the throne. The year that followed seemed to announce King Farouk’s decline, until he met the young commoner Narriman Sadek in 1949 whom he married two years later after the young woman had been taught royal etiquette. Their union was profusely supported by the population, who rejoiced to see someone from their ranks join the royal family. Queen Narriman gave birth to a boy shortly after. In 1952, however, the coup d’etat led to the king’s deposition, but in spite of the tragic turn that took their romance, King Farouk and Queen Narriman remained one of the most iconic couples in Egypt’s recent history.
http://www.faroukmisr.net/farouk_nariman.htm
In his series Icons of the Nile, Avedissian deploys sophisticated stenciled works readapting popular pictures of national heroes, admired politicians, popular singers and actors. These pictures are based on media imagery from the mid-20th century, a period that witnessed a socio-cultural reawakening permeated with a vigorous wave of Arab nationalism in the country. Avedissian's concern for the disappearance of Egypt's rich heritage at the outbreak of the first Gulf War motivated him to explore topics such as memory, history, imagery and self-representation in Egyptian culture. This shift in focus was a defining moment in his career as a contemporary artist, which had previously concentrated on photography and hand-dyed and sewn textile panels. Avedissian reached the pinnacle of this project with the painting Icons of the Nile, produced over the decade following the present work, and consisting of a hundred and twenty panels depicting portraits of important Egyptian figures from the 20th century. This work was sold in Replica Shoes
’s Doha, on 22 April 2013, lot 11.