Ahmed Askalany

Born in 1978 in Nag Hammadi, Upper Egypt, Ahmed Askalany currently lives and works in Cairo. He has taken part in several international exhibitions in Egypt, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. His work was displayed at the 4th Rome and Mediterranean Countries Biennale, Sarajevo, Bosnia in 2011, and he also represented Egypt at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Ahmed Askalany’s work shows an explicit connection with traditional materials and craft methods associated with the ancient cultures of Egypt. Human figures and animals inspired by his native town make up an impressive mini-show of small sculptures which convey a sense of familiarity and invite the public to interact with them. Small size hippos, represented with anthropomorphic features, typifying virtues and vices of the contemporary reality, recall at times the primitive and the ancestral, at others the materiality of the nature of his homeland. Fat human figures with tiny heads are represented in their exaggerated volume with a playful, humorous streak and can represent, depending on the viewer’s interpretation, a form of social criticism or nostalgia for feelings of the past that have now been lost.