Evelyn Ashamallah

Biography

In 1987 Evelyn Ashamallah drew two horned creatures in wax colours on a sheet of paper measuring 70 by 50 centimetres. The pink one stands on a rock with its hands raised; the green one sits on the ground and looks at its palms. Beside them are two lizards, a large one and a small one, facing in opposite directions. The work is called “Mother Genie”, and it already shows her whole method: a fairy tale without explanation, in which the viewer decides who is comforting whom.

She was born on 10 August 1948 in Desouk, in Kafr el-Sheikh Governorate, into a Coptic Christian family. Her parents were Ashamallah Eskandar Hanna and Elaine Mikhail Hanna, and she has three brothers.

In 1973 she graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Alexandria University. In the same year, and until 1975, she wrote for the magazine Rose al-Yūsuf. Later she worked as a professional artist for the General Authority of Cultural Palaces and belonged to the Fine Arts Administration of the Republican Cultural Authority. From 1979 to 1982 she showed work in exhibitions in Algeria, and in the 1980s she lived there for several years. Her first solo exhibitions were held in Cairo, at the Cairo Atelier, in 1985–1987; in 1989 she exhibited in the Round Hall of the Syndicate of Fine Artists, of which she was a founding member. She belongs to the Egyptian generation of the 1970s. It took shape after the defeat in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and moved away from the realism that had dominated Egyptian art in the 1960s. Those said to have influenced her include Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar and Hamed Nada, both of whom painted folk fantasy with an Egyptian surrealist touch. She began with pencil drawing, then moved on to oil, wax and acrylic. From natural landscapes she arrived at abstract portraits and plants. She is a member of the Cairo Atelier Group of Artists and Writers.

The prizes came early. In 1985 she won first prize in the Mother’s Day competition at the Ministry of Mass Culture; in 1989 the photography award in the competition to decorate the Egyptian Opera House, and an Appreciation Award at the first Youth Salon. In 1992 she was given the Faust International Prize by the International Faust Society in Germany.

Around the turn of the 1990s and 2000s she also did museum work. In 1993–1995 she directed the Mohammed Nagy Museum, and in 2000–2002 the Egypt Modern Art Museum in Cairo. In the 1990s her work travelled to exhibitions of Egyptian and Arab women artists: in 1992 to the Egyptian Academy in Rome, in 1992–1994 on a tour of the United States, and in 2000 to Thessaloniki. Solo shows took place in Nuremberg (1999), Tanta (2002) and Alexandria (2004). In 2003 a retrospective was held at the Ebdaa Hall in Cairo.

Works from 1988 and 1998 give an idea of her methods. In “The King and the Servant” (1988, acrylic, 70 by 50 cm), a broad-bodied tan king with thin legs sits on a blue throne with a flower in his hand, while a small orange servant looks at his outstretched hand. “A Child Playing” (1998, gouache, 15 by 10 cm) shows an orange figure seen from behind, its face reduced to a pair of large green lips, taking a long stride with a yo-yo. To my mind, what matters most in such sheets is that the meaning of the scene is left open.

In 2013 the exhibition “20 Years of Evelyn Ashamallah” was held at 6 Contemporary Arts in Cairo, in 2017 a show at the Khan Al-Maghrabi Gallery, and in 2021 the exhibition “The Unspeakable Words” at the Axis Gallery. In 2018 she took part in the Fifth Burullus International Forum for Painting on Walls and Boats. Her work appeared on the cover of Caroline Seymour-Jorn’s book on cultural criticism in Egyptian women’s writing, and by 2005 she had already had 22 exhibitions.