There are artists who have real talent, but life circumstances may prevent them from continuing their presence on the scene, so their works remain away from the public for many years before they find someone to re-present them and discover their value.
Hence the importance of the exhibition of the late plastic artist Attia Helmy, “Athar from Nada”, with which the “Dhay Zamalek Gallery” begins its activity this season. It presents a rare collection of works by an artist who has not completed her creative journey, even though her beginnings bore the features of a clear and promising artistic project.
The exhibition gains its specificity from the association of Attia Helmy’s name with the artist Hamed Nada, the pioneer of popular surrealism in contemporary Egyptian art. She was his student and wife in her early days.
But he does not stop at this relationship, as he tries to put Attia Helmy back in the place she deserves as an independent artist, and to raise many questions about a female experience that was cut off early, and her works remained far from the circle of display, the public, and documentation.
Her works in the exhibition reveal her mastery of the rules of perspective and human anatomy, and the thickness of the colors also draws attention to her relationship with color as a structural element, not just a means of covering a surface.
Some of the works also reveal her ability to use the paint knife alongside the brush, giving the surface of the painting a texture and physical presence that matches her conscious interest in mass and light. This is due to her studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts, and her graduation from this well-established Egyptian academy in 1962.
The paintings also highlight her special interest in Egyptian folk life, the neighborhood, and children and their games, which are vocabulary that she reformulated with a vision with a special artistic sense.
Regarding this, her son, the artist Amr Hamed Nada, told Asharq Al-Awsat: “The popular environment is strongly present in her art through its small details, children, old streets, and daily movement that was part of Egyptian life at that stage.”
But child play specifically seems to be one of the topics that captured her interest, which Nada attributes to her graduation project, which dealt with popular games, in a visual study that carries, in addition to its artistic value, an aspect of documenting society and its culture in a time when these games were an integral part of the Egyptian childhood memory.
Her son confirms that the artist, who passed away last February, would have been very happy if she had seen her work in this exhibition, and felt the public’s admiration for her experience, which unfortunately was not complete after marriage, starting a family, and the intersection of life’s responsibilities with her artistic project.
He continues: “After her separation from my father, she moved further away from the artistic field, and went to work in the Ministry of Culture, where she held many important job positions,” pointing out that “despite the separation, this does not negate her influence by the pioneer of Egyptian popular surrealism; She was his student.”
But the Egyptian artist and critic Sami El Balshy believes that “its association with the name of an artist of the caliber of Hamed Nada is the most difficult thing that Attia Helmy faced.” Based on the fact that when the spouses are visual artists, the comparison and development of matters are not always fair, especially at a time when the Egyptian artistic movement was more inclined to place women in the position of support or inspiration, rather than in the position of the artist with the independent project.”
Al-Balshi told Asharq Al-Awsat: “In general, an artist’s marriage to a prominent artist in many cases causes a decline in her presence. The presence of two artists in one house may seem on the surface to be an opportunity for interaction and stimulation, but it may turn indirectly into an unequal relationship in which one of them becomes the main presence, while the other - who is the wife often, if not always - gradually withdraws from the scene.”
The Egyptian critic confirms that Attia Helmy was “the project of a great artist, and here her story appears to be part of a broader context that Egyptian female artists lived in that era.” While some female artists were able to impose their presence and adhere to their creative space, others moved away from art.”
But on the other hand, “reducing Attia’s experience to being a former wife of Hamid Nada is another injustice to her; Her works revealed in the exhibition confirm that she has a special plastic voice, and that her relationship with the popular environment was not merely an echo of her husband’s experience,” according to what a large number of critics and artists indicated during the opening of the exhibition.
Here Al-Balshi comments, saying: “It is true that there is an intersection of interest in popular society and its vocabulary, but Attia had her own treatment, as her experience embodies an artistic nucleus that is worth pausing before. Dealing with her works also opens the door to contemplating the scene within which Hamed Nada’s experience was shaped, without this meaning reducing the latter’s experience or interpreting it through his wife.”
Perhaps the most important thing is that her works belong to a moment in which Egyptian art was searching for its own language, and tended to draw inspiration from the local environment and popular memory, away from the literal transfer of Western models.
In this context, Attia Helmy’s experience can be read as part of that transformation, and not just a family experience associated with the name Neda. According to Al-Balshi.
Al-Balshi says: “The exhibition gains an additional dimension with the inauguration of the hall of the pioneering artist Hamed Nada in the (Dhay Zamalek) Gallery, in a celebration that restores an aspect of the Egyptian plastic memory. But the irony is that the opening of the hall associated with the artist’s name coincides with the unveiling of his ex-wife’s works, as if the exhibition gives Attia Helmy an opportunity to appear again, after she lived for a long time in the shadows next to a more famous name.”
The exhibition includes 6 large paintings and 5 small paintings, in addition to a group of Hamed Nada’s sketches that form a visual context that allows the recipient to see the distance between the two experiences, and to capture the points of intersection and difference between two artists who lived part of their lives within the same artistic environment.
The Chinese theatrical performance “Purple Tail” stems from the traditions of Chinese Shigu art, by transferring it to a contemporary experimental space that mixes operatic performance, movement, and visual composition. The show participated in the official competition of the thirty-third session of the Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival, opening a world in which human lives coexist with the spirits of foxes, drawing inspiration from the atmosphere of traditional “Liao Zhai” tales, but without just retelling them. It turns it into a meditation on love, desire, gratitude, and destiny.
The events start with Qiao Sheng, a young scientist who lives a humble life, but has a great ambition to change his fate. While he goes on a search for herbs that will help Bai Yue, the girl he loves, he encounters a heavenly thunderstorm that leads him to meet “Azi,” the spirit of a female fox who is injured during the storm and is about to perish, and he intervenes to save her.
“Azi” appears as a fox spirit with a special ability to read and deal with human emotions, but she does not come into Qiao Sheng’s life as an evil force seeking to seduce him. On the contrary, she gives him a magical purple tail capable of granting wishes, as a gift of gratitude for saving her. However, the gift carries within it a greater power than its appearance. Once Qiao Sheng returns to the human world, the tail begins to change its position from a mere magical tool to a force that reveals the ambition and desire hidden within him to transcend the limits of his previous life.
Thanks to the power he obtained, Qiao Sheng succeeds in passing the imperial examinations, and goes from a poor, ambitious young man to a man approaching the position he dreamed of, but his life changes and becomes complicated, and he becomes torn between keeping the tail and getting rid of it, and between the power it gives him and the slavery it imposes on him to his desires.
Speaking about his experience with the show, Chinese actor Hui Haifeng, who plays the character Qiao Sheng, told Asharq Al-Awsat that his choice for the role came after multiple auditions. The director was considering more than one possibility to embody the character, but in the end he saw that his nature and style of presence were compatible with Qiao Sheng.
Haifeng added that work on the show began in 2024, and the team took about a month to refine its details before entering the experimental theater competitions at the Zijin Arts Festival, where it won the “Best Performance” and “Best Production” awards. For him, the success of the show was not just an artistic appreciation, but rather an affirmation of the team’s ability to deal with heritage material and re-present it in a theatrical language that is more open to experimentation and adventure.
The Chinese actor explained that “the majority of the work team belongs to young generations, from the director to the actors, which gave the experience a different energy during rehearsals and performances, while the team atmosphere during work was characterized by fun, rapid communication, and willingness to help each other,” stressing that the pressures became an incentive that pushed everyone to develop the show so that harmony was an essential part of the nature of the experience that attempts to break the familiar molds of the art of “Shigo.”
Regarding his show in Cairo, Haifeng said that what concerned him most before facing the Egyptian audience was the language barrier, wondering whether Qiao Sheng’s character and feelings would reach the recipient without him understanding the Chinese words, but the defining moment came when he came off the stage and reached the audience seats, and he saw in the eyes of the viewers and their facial expressions that they were following the character and interacting with it. Then he realized that the body and emotion are able to cross language when the performance is sincere and loaded with feelings.
He pointed out that the preparation for the show in Cairo did not stop at technical rehearsals, but rather included lighting, sound, stage dimensions, and shipping of accessories. However, upon its arrival, the team faced unexpected challenges, including the tilt of the stage and the absence of the traditional carpet used in “Shigo” shows, in addition to problems with lighting and difficulty in communication due to the difference in language. Overcoming these obstacles required quickly rearranging the details, and seeking the help of workers at the Chinese Theater Association and translators to reach a suitable format for the show.
Haifeng stressed that these difficulties did not detract from the team's experience, but rather made the moment the show ended more important for him, especially after the audience remained in the hall and applauded for a long time, stressing that this response was the true test of the success of the experiment in Cairo. Because it came from an audience that did not belong to the cultural environment in which the show originated, and yet was able to interact with Qiao Sheng's struggles and emotions, which the actor considered the most satisfying result for him.
Researchers from Dalian University of Technology in China have developed a new design for a lightweight material inspired by eggshells, which may help in the future protect spacecraft from dangerous collisions with space debris that moves at tremendous speeds in orbit around the Earth.
The researchers explained that the innovative design relies on aluminum structures filled with water, capable of absorbing and dissipating the energy of high-speed collisions. The results were published on Tuesday in the Journal of Applied Physics.
Space debris is one of the most prominent risks facing satellites, vehicles and telescopes in near-Earth orbit. Scientists estimate that there are about a million pieces of debris larger than one centimeter in size, while even smaller objects can cause significant damage when they collide with a spacecraft at high speeds.
During the study, the researchers were inspired by the method of distributing eggshell units within the structure, rather than relying on a single shell, which may easily break when exposed to concentrated force. The team made small aluminum modules that resembled eggshells, arranged them side by side between two aluminum plates, then filled them with water.
The team explained its idea that when a fast object collides with the outer panel, the entire force of the impact is not transmitted directly to the other side; Rather, the units begin to deform and collapse successively, distributing the force of the collision over a larger area and gradually absorbing its energy. As each unit deforms, part of the energy is consumed, so less energy reaches the corresponding plate.
The researchers also found that water enhances the structure's ability to deal with shocks. When a strong collision occurs, water moves inside the units, and the interaction between it and the aluminum helps limit the spread of shock waves inside the structure, which contributes to absorbing part of the energy and dissipating it instead of transmitting it directly through the armor.
During the tests, the researchers compared several designs using 3D-printed models and computer simulations, which included aluminum panels alone, water-filled aluminum balls between the aluminum panels, and a design inspired by eggshells.
The eggshell-inspired design showed the best performance among the tested models; It was able to withstand high loads, and reduced the speed of the projectile used in the test by about 65 percent, compared to a 51 percent reduction when using aluminum panels alone.
The researchers also found that the orientation of the eggshell modules within the structure affects their efficiency, and modules placed in an upright position, with their smallest end touching the top plate, were the most effective of the orientations the team tested.
The researchers believe that the importance of the design lies in its reliance on the geometry of the material to distribute and dissipate the impact energy, rather than simply increasing the thickness of the metal shield. This approach may be useful in the spacecraft industry, where weight is a critical factor. Every increase in the weight of the vehicle increases the cost of launching it.
The team pointed out that lightweight structures inspired by nature represent a promising path to protection against high-speed collisions, but stressed that the material is still in the research and development stage, and has not become a shield ready for use in spacecraft.
