| In my painting, I use imagery of body perfection, and treat them to reflect metamorphosis and the movement from one state to another. For the male figures I appropriate images of body builders, and for the female figures I use images extracted from advertising and from cheesy commercial tabloids. The images are enlarged archival color and black-and-white photocopies and silk-screen prints. The choice of the image reflects the perfection of body proportions, a criteria used in all Mediterranean mythology, and a trait that does not represent a significant proportion of any population; this provides for my desire to mingle fiction with reality. I combine imagery of the ancient iconography with deja-vu contemporary elements, hence the use of Anubis (god of the underworld) and Batman, Bastet (goddess of domestication) and Catwoman. |  |
Khaled Hafez
In my painting, I use imagery of body perfection, and treat them to reflect metamorphosis and the movement from one state to another. For the male figures I appropriate images of body builders, and for the female figures I use images extracted from advertising and from cheesy commercial tabloids. The images are enlarged archival color and black-and-white photocopies and silk-screen prints. The choice of the image reflects the perfection of body proportions, a criteria used in all Mediterranean mythology, and a trait that does not represent a significant proportion of any population; this provides for my desire to mingle fiction with reality. I combine imagery of the ancient iconography with deja-vu contemporary elements, hence the use of Anubis (god of the underworld) and Batman, Bastet (goddess of domestication) and Catwoman. The icons are manipulated to insinuate metamorphosis. I believe that we are at a point in history where there is cultural recycling: visual and conceptual beliefs among other aspects.
Nute, goddess of the skies, the beautiful woman who leans with both hands and feet on the lying Gebb (god of earth and lands), elongated in a supernatural manner to span the entirety of the skies, is omnipresent in my painting. The presence and symbol of this goddess in ancient Egyptian tombs is outstanding: she is pictured to take the sun of man (sunrise) from birth to the grave (sunset). In my painting I appropriate top models from advertisements and distort the figure to simulate the sacred goddess. I try to probe the notion of sacred (gods and goddesses) with the ephemeral/consumable (advertising models).
The use of the flower imagery represents beauty, perfection, regeneration, and metamorphosis. The images of roses and tulips carry profound carnal and sensual reminiscence. Both represent in Western mythology the counterpart of the lotus in Eastern cultures. In my work, and in the work of other Egyptian contemporary image makers, the use of déjà vu motifs like lotus is avoided because it eliminates the esotericism, and renders the image too rhetoric or accessible.
