From the position of an observer who merely looks and does not intervene, the visual artist Hosni Abu Bakr has been following, for many years, the details of Egyptian life in the streets, neighborhoods, hamlets, and squares. He monitors the movement of people, their relationships, the ways they celebrate, and the manifestations of their sadness, without knowing at the beginning that these fleeting scenes will one day turn into a vast visual inventory that he restores in his paintings.
Among these scenes is his exhibition “Egyptian Drama”, currently held at “Samah Gallery” in Sheikh Zayed City (west of Cairo), and continuing until the end of this September.
The artist presents about 20 paintings that deal with Egyptian life in all its diversity, and place the person and the details of his ordinary day at the heart of the scene.
Hosni Abu Bakr says: “My interest in the people of my country began since my childhood. I used to watch them, celebrate knowing their conditions, and wander around different places, observing life from afar. During this time, I was enjoying the Egyptian atmosphere and people’s love of life.”
With the discovery of his love for art and drawing, he realized that what his visual memory stored was richer than he imagined. The Egyptian environment provides the artist with inexhaustible material, according to what he added to Asharq Al-Awsat: “Daily life, laughter and entertainment, social rituals, crafts, methods of buying and selling, and human relations with their love, estrangement, affection, and interests, are the heart of my works.”
From here, the artist found that he had before him a “wide canvas” through which he could approach Egyptian society with all its contradictions and details, and that embodying them had become extremely important. He explains: “My works in the exhibition are an attempt to preserve an aspect of Egyptian memory in a time when technology is accelerating, and images and information are constantly changing.”
In this context, he raises a pivotal question: “Who can preserve the Egyptian form of life for future generations?” He answers: “I see this as my role, and the role of every Egyptian artist who loves his country. Therefore, I decided to act as a documenter or historian of it, but through the tools of plastic art.”
This explains how the recipient can live, through the exhibition’s paintings, the details of Egyptian life up close, seeing crafts threatened with extinction, various ways of celebrating and mourning, as well as the relationships between people and the rhythm of daily life.
Abu Bakr says: “My paintings are like social narratives of Egypt. Whoever comes after years can return to it to see how it lived and moved.”
It seems that, during all of this, he did not give up his position as a observer from afar, which helped him enrich his visual repertoire. He comments: “True, I just stuck to watching; Because staying a little away from the event allows you to see the whole picture, while going into the details of the scene leads to seeing only parts of it. Therefore, I watch and do not interfere, and I also leave the recipient the right to interact with the painting.”
Abu Bakr chose the title “Egyptian Drama” for his project, influenced by his work in acting for a period, and based on the concept of drama, as a space that accommodates various patterns of life and human behavior. Life is not a single path, but rather a mixture of comedy, tragedy, movement, joy and sadness, according to him.
From this perspective, the artist deals with the painting as if it were a movie scene, and assumes the role of the director who distributes the roles of the characters within the frame. In his paintings, there are heroes and extras, lighting, décor, clothes and accessories, and silent dialogue between the characters, but the director here does not write the dialogue, but rather lets life itself take charge of performing the scene.
This vision goes beyond the present time to reach the distant past. During his study of life in ancient Egypt, Abu Bakr found a striking similarity between many patterns of behavior at that time and some details of contemporary Egyptian life. He says: “The external forms have changed, and the means have developed, but the Egyptian person still searches for joy, deals with the harshness of life, practices buying and selling, and celebrates arts, culture and architecture. In short, life in Egypt is life.
In front of the painting “Building the Pyramids,” the artist stood for a long time contemplating it as if he were seeing it for the first time, and said, pointing to it: “This work I am very proud of; Because it summarizes an important aspect of Egyptian civilization.” He continued: “Everyone is fascinated by the pyramids, but the details of the life that surrounded their construction remain less present in the common image of them. In this work, I imagined this huge project from the inside: how the Egyptians were building, and what life was like surrounding the construction of one of the greatest achievements in human history.”
Abu Bakr does not limit his interest to the local and the traditional; In his opinion, the artist is also “a son of his time.” Therefore, he does not isolate himself from world events.
This appears, for example, in the painting “Diana’s Market,” in which he recalls an atmosphere related to the tension between Iran and America and the Strait of Hormuz issue, indicating that the artist, no matter how preoccupied he is with heritage and the past, remains part of an intertwined world whose events impose themselves on him. He says: “The artist should not live inside a cocoon separated from reality. Keeping up with events is part of his honesty towards his time.”
In most of the exhibition’s works, Abu Bakr uses acrylic on canvas, which is the material he prefers. Because it gives him the ability to focus on the characters, events, and interactions, without adding elements that might distract the recipient, and he also relies on a color combination that maintains his special mark, even with different topics.
A bright or cheerful color with a carnival character is not a goal in itself, “but it should be placed in a place that serves the idea of the work,” according to him.
Perhaps what Abu Bakr is betting most on in “Egyptian Drama” is simplicity, and that the intellectual and the ordinary recipient alike will find an entry point into the work. This is related, he says, to his personality itself; He celebrates simplicity, and believes that it is the shortest way to reach people, and therefore he prefers that his paintings remain open to more than one reading.
After fifty years, Marcel Khalife re-records his first album, “Promises from the Storm.” And when you listen to his voice after all this time, with its crazy fluctuations and loud transformations, you feel that nothing has changed. It is as if the circumstances are still the same: injustice, sadness, grief, fear of the unknown, and Marcel’s voice steadfast in the face of eternity. What is strange is that with the rise of the Peace Movement in the 1990s, in the midst of Oslo, Marcel Khalife seemed as if his revolutionary songs were overtaken by events and no longer had their previous popularity. Then came all the bloody events that changed the scene, and the audience found again, in Khalifa’s songs, something in harmony with their feelings and confusion.
This is why the album “Promises from the Storm”, in its 2026 release, sounds fresh and modern. This time the album is released with four songs instead of five, and the song “Jafra” deleted the words of the poet Izz al-Din al-Manasra, and kept four songs, all of which are poems by Mahmoud Darwish. Although the album was first released in 1976, immediately after the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, its songs are still among Khalifa's most famous and popular works ever.
Is there anyone who has not memorized the song “I Long for My Mother’s Bread” and repeats it while his heart is filled with longing for a warm embrace? Is there anyone who did not sing with Khalifa the song “Passport” or repeat the words “There is a gun between Rita and my eyes?” As for the song that bears the name of the album, it contains within its folds the revolution in its most eloquent manifestations and the most sublime and noble in expression, where there is cruelty, without blood, shedding, or violence, but rather a language that rises above directness to address the trees, the eyes, and the eyelids:
And so be it.. “I must reject death, burn the tears of tender songs, and strip the olive tree of all false branches. If I sing for joy behind the lids of frightened eyes, it is because the storm promised me wine... and new toasts and rainbows.”
Each of these songs turned into an artistic legacy that was passed down through generations orally after they made reading easier. The poems mixed with Khalifa’s music and his voice made Mahmoud Darwish’s treasures accessible to everyone, even those who are not interested in poetry and do not thirst for the pages of collections.
On the occasion of this renewed release of the album “Promises from the Storm,” Marcel Khalife will embark on a European tour that begins today, September 25, in a London concert, then Paris, Brussels, Oslo, Geneva, and many other cities, where the tour will end next May.
Marcel Khalife announced this tour bearing the name of the album on his Facebook page, saying: “What has changed so that the idea of my son - the beloved who urged me a year ago to enter the studio and record in black and white (Storm’s Promises) - triumphs?” “I am looking at the mural of Darwish’s life, which took me more than two years to write music for a hundred pages of poetry.” He describes the mural as “a lyrical epic that took a lot from me and gave me more and then more.” I am waiting for the right time to embody it on stage.”
As for the circumstances of the new birth of “Promises from the Storm,” what happened is that after the Israeli bombing of Lebanon in late 2024, Marcel Khalife, who was on an artistic tour, found himself stranded in Paris. He then remembered the request of his son, musician Bashar Mar Khalifa, who was always urging him to re-submit his first album, which has now become a classic. One morning, he rang his doorbell, carrying his instrument, and said: “Shall we go?” “I am ready to register.”
On this occasion, Marcel Khalife recalls the circumstances of his first arrival in Paris in 1976 and the birth of his first album there, and the feelings of loneliness and anxiety, and the meetings with friends that alleviated the feeling of being a stranger between the metro stations.
Marcel Khalife repeatedly narrated how, with the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, he was uprooted from his coastal town, “Amchit,” displaced with his family to Beirut, and how his Palestinian identity made him unwelcome even at the National Conservatory. However, during that pivotal period in particular, the “Al-Mayadeen” band was revived, and during that period also Marcel Khalife lived in isolation in imposed isolation, so he resorted to the collections of Mahmoud Darwish, whom he had not yet met, and began composing the poems he liked and singing them, until he left by car to the French capital.
In Paris, a music producer offered him to record an album, but he agreed, and found that the songs that he had been composing and humming to the poems of Mahmoud Darwish while he was confined to the house in Lebanon were ready. At that time, the album, with its glowing title “Promises from the Storm,” received a wide response, especially since, after its release, he held a concert at the “Humanity Festival,” which is organized periodically in Paris, and a large crowd gathered for it, lovers of justice among peoples.
In a Lebanese food stall at the festival, the album was sold, and the demand for it was great. 500 copies were sold, even though Marcel was a young artist that no one knew in the country he had just arrived in.
As for the author of the album’s poems, Mahmoud Darwish, he had not met him yet. After a period of selling the album, marketing, and success, the meeting happened between the two men, the author and the composer, at a dinner organized by mutual friends. When Khalifa introduced himself to the poet, he met him with the following response: “I know who you are, but why didn’t you even tell me that you use my words?” From that moment, a strong friendship arose between a poet and a composer who would together chart an artistic path that will not be repeated.
The role of advertising goes beyond promoting a commodity, product, or project; With the analysis of its various dimensions, vocabulary, and models, according to modern research methods, advertising can become an indicator and indication of the prevailing lifestyle, culture, and awareness, as well as documenting consumption patterns and their multiple connotations.
Dr. Mohamed Shoman, a professor of media who specializes in critical analysis of discourse and winner of the State Appreciation Award in Social Sciences this year, monitors the social, economic, political and cultural connotations contained in the advertisements of the national newspaper Al-Ahram over a period of 129 years, in his most recent book “Transformations of Advertising Discourse in Egypt: From Colonialism to Globalization 1882 - 2011.” Recently published by Leeds House in Cairo.
According to what the author confirms, “advertising discourse in Egypt from the British occupation in 1882 until (the revolution of January 25, 2011) was a point of meeting and conflict between the advertiser and the consumer, between national identity and attempts at Westernization, between the citizen and the authority (the occupation authority and the national authority), between the values of consumer capitalism, globalization, and cultural identity. In short, it is a symbolic arena in which political structures, cultural connotations, class conflicts, and future visions for family and society intersect.”
The book covers approximately 129 years, which is a long and extended period full of societal transformations. The writer tells Asharq Al-Awsat: “I chose to study newspaper advertisements in Al-Ahram newspaper from the British occupation of Egypt until the January 25, 2011 revolution, because it was regularly published during that period, and focused on pivotal points or discontinuities that reflect and provide models of transformation and change, whether in the structure of society and politics or in advertising discourse. This approach imposed the selection of a random sample of advertisements, each of which records a break or shift from previous advertisements or events in Egyptian society and politics during 129 years that witnessed the colonial era, the monarchy, and distorted liberalism in Egypt, leading to the 1952 revolution with its three versions in power: the Nasserist era, the Sadat era, and the Mubarak era.
Shoman adds: “In the book, I presented a comprehensive critical reading of the history of the discontinuities and transformations witnessed by advertising in Egypt in terms of form and content. I also discussed the development, discontinuity, and transformation in visual design and distribution, the themes, values, symbols, and connotations that it reflects or indicates, and the relationship of this to transformations in politics, economics, culture, identity, journalism, the advertising industry itself, and Egyptian society.”
The book is based on several analytical approaches related to the researcher, in addition to relying on the analysis of advertising according to Van Leeuwen's model, and the analysis of advertising according to Jay Kwok's multimedia semiotic analysis. To achieve a comprehensive overview and deep analytical vision of all dimensions of advertising in terms of form, content, elements, symbols and signs it contains, and their role in understanding the composition of the consumer society or the “consumer citizen” that the advertisement targets.
The book monitors and analyzes the form and content of advertisements in the colonial period in Egypt. Advertisements during that period from 1882 to 1918, with the end of World War I, promoted a “colonial cosmopolitanism” limited to major cities and elites, and presented Western products and imported goods “such as agricultural machinery imported from Britain,” “imported cognac,” and “jewelry and diamonds imported from America” as symbols of modernity, civility, and social status. In addition to advertisements for “loans for landowners” provided by the Egyptian Land Bank. Within the framework of attempts to westernize identity and marginalize the local actor, the advertising discourse focused on the Western hat and Western elegance as a sign of sophistication in contrast to the absence of the popular identity of the turban/fez. Too often, Al-Masry was marginalized as a “producer” or main actor, only to appear as a “passive consumer.”
With the rise of the National Movement and the 1919 Revolution, the declaration began to be divided between two conflicting discourses; The discourse of colonial Westernization, and a resistant national discourse that supports national industry and Egyptian institutions (such as the Bank of Egypt and Ghazl El Mahalla Company).
In his analysis of the advertising discourse in the Nasserite period since 1957, Shoman explains how the process of Egyptianization of advertisements began, and the economic and social transformations that accompanied it, to which the advertising discourse responded and interacted, as advertising acquired a clear political and national character. The Nasserist regime employed advertising to serve independent development, local industrialization, and mobilization for Arab nationalism and socialism.
While the seventies witnessed a radical shift in the philosophy of advertising in parallel with the policy of economic openness and the shift from a state economy to a market economy. The advertising discourse shifted from supporting the “national self” to promoting a citizen reshaped as “investor, tourist, consumer, and religious.” Advertisements for aviation, international hotels, and investment services spread. The advertisement also contributed to the production of propaganda focusing on the “faithful president” and the hero of war and peace. Debt was employed to legitimize capitalist transformations and investment tools (such as issuing jihad bonds and investment companies), creating a hybrid modernity.
During the rule of President Mubarak from the 1980s until 2011, the writer monitors the exploitation of money-making companies for advertisements to improve their image and attract savings through religious discourse, before they disappeared at the beginning of the 1990s. It also monitored the impact of privatization on the shift in advertising discourse from supporting the public sector to promoting the sale of its shares and privatization. And breaking the state’s monopoly on real estate by promoting advertisements for “resorts” and closed residential complexes. The book includes examples of advertisements that the author monitored and analyzed according to specific methods and a vision that monitors the social transformations that Egyptian society has gone through over the course of 129 years.
