Hany Rashed with participants during workshop
CAIRO – 21 August 2017: Hany Rashed, the renowned Egyptian visual artist, is holding his third “Naema’s office is bleeding” workshop for painting and collage at Medrar for contemporary art. Egypt Today attended the workshop and met with Hany Rashed who spoke about collage art. The workshop will resonate to a gallery displaying the outputs of the participants and will run between August 27 and September 5. The gallery will be suspended during the holiday of Eid Al Adha.
ET: Tell us about the workshop
HR: The workshop consists of nine classes, each of the first five classes teaches a new technique and a new idea, the following four classes feature open topics. Workshop participants are free to choose the topic they prefer to work on. But mainly our topics are related to pictures searched from the internet or cellphones and we work with photocopies to make collages.
ET: What is a collage?
HR: Collage to me is visualizing a way of thinking. If you think about it video montage is a collage; when someone shoots a film and starts merging different clips and sounds. Ideas are practically a collage as well; to find patterns that can fit together is a collage. Even the name of the workshop “Naema’s office is bleeding” or “Naema’s desk is bleeding” is a collage because one time we used the manager’s desk because the place was too crowded, and then we were discussing movie stars such as “Naema Akef” when paint spilled on the floor like it was “bleeding.” Collages teach students techniques like how to paint, but they don’t teach them how to think of something to paint.
ET: Who can attend your workshops?
HR: Anyone, as long as they have a passion to learn art and be artists. I make students create art since day one, I don’t ask them to learn drawing first and then create, I tell them create and learn while creating. Because I myself did not study art and was taught by someone who did not study art – the celebrated Egyptian artist Mohamed Abla- that is why I prefer teaching the way I was taught.
ET: What is your method of teaching?
HR: Usually collage is taught through cutting magazine images and putting them together, however, in this workshop our main material is photocopies from the internet or our cellphones; we use magazines as secondary material, because they have limited sections like sports, fashion or politics so we just use them to color and fill gabs.
ET: What else do participants learn in this workshop?
HR: We mainly do three things here: we do a workshop, display the works of art in a gallery and then sell these works of art. So whoever joins learns art and gains confidence by learning how to sell their art.
People think that to sell art you need to have a big name or many connections which is not true; after the last two workshops we sold the artworks, even if for minimal prices it was meant to make each artist feel like they made the money they paid to enter the workshop which was also a small price, just to feel that what they made has value.
ET: What are your upcoming projects?
HR: I have been teaching every month for two years now. Workshops consume my time, and I want to paint. So I have decided that this is the last workshop, I will limit my workshops to one or two big ones each year.
Egypt Today then met Mona Essam, the workshop’s teacher assistant, who has been Rashed’s student for three years now. Mona has completed her Masters’ Degree in collage and is preparing for her PhD. and now teaches her own collage and painting workshops
ET: Would you tell us more details about the workshop?
ME: What Hany does here mainly is try to get artists to experiment and try with everything, collage is a type of art that literally has no boundaries and you can deliver your thought through whichever way or material. I have been here since the beginning I was a participant at the first Naema workshop and experienced Hany’s motive in trying new things. For instance the first workshop Hany had major artists such as Huda Luttfi and Mohamed Abla give us lectures and by the way these artists still come to the galleries after the workshop to show their support to the participants.
In the second and third workshops Hany decided he wants participants to come up with new ideas on their own. He were trying to make them understand that it is okay to make mistakes and learn from them. The most important thing is to keep going, because if you have high expectations you might find it harder to create.
Along the three workshops the goal was mainly to teach students not to be afraid and have more patience with their work. Hany also follows up with each and every one of us after the workshop is done and always tries to help us develop and keep on producing.
Egypt Today also spoke to Reham Qasem and Engi Mohsen, two of the participants in the workshop. Not only does Reham have a degree in applied arts she also works as a teacher assistant in her college, when asked what made her join the workshop she said
RQ: I have always known about Hany Rashed and his galleries because he’s quite famous on social media and I have been waiting for this workshop for a year now. I was very interested in his methods of teaching because collage teaches you to express your ideas no matter how complicated they are. Hany’s workshop is quite beneficial not only academically but also as a means of self-expression.
Engi Mohsen is a 4th year student at the architecture department, faculty of engineering, who always had a passion for collage:
EM: I find collage very interesting, I even used to use it in my college assignments and projects because collage is very liberating and allows you to deliver your ideas however you want., and I wanted to join the workshop since last year but I didn’t make, and this year I also didn’t make the deadline but I sent my samples anyway and they told me I’m accepted which made me very happy. Not many places teach collage, I mean I knew how to do it but I needed a little more guidance which I didn’t find anywhere else but here.
Mohamed Allam and Diaa Hamed are the founders of Medrar for contemporary art. They added that the workshop is quite successful and has been receiving more attention and participants every year.
The workshop runs between August 5 and August 23. The gallery is set to begin on August 27 until September 1 and then continue after Eid Al Adha holiday, every day from 5pm to 10pm.
Hany Rashed and famous contemporary artists Mohamed Abla
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