A Journey Through History and Stories, Contexts, Materials, And

by contemporary historiography, the Via Francigena should not be viewed as a A Journey through History and Stories, single road, but rather a portion of land criss-crossed with various roads shaped by the constant passage of people and goods between Italy and France and, from there, the rest of Europe. Merchants, pilgrims, and armed soldiers, including the Contexts, Materials, and Techniques. Crusader invaders who were given by the Arabs the generic name “Franj”—mean- ing Franks—traveled across these areas for centuries, nurturing a dense network A Conversation with Wael Shawky of shrines, abbeys, monasteries, and hospitals, which thanks to these multifari- ous peoples in motion gained their own strategic role as secular power centers −Marcella Beccaria and places of culture. I’m with Wael Shawky in the Manica Lunga, the space where we’re install- ing his exhibition. Only a few days separate us from the preview and there are many details to finish. We’re working with great intensity but there is great satis- faction in that, after weeks of work, the show is finally within reach. We think back to the artist’s initial site visits, when our conversations turned many times to the features of the land surrounding the Castello. Right from the start, it was clear that an exhibition at Rivoli of the complete cycle of the Cabaret Crusades, his films dedicated to the story of the Crusades, would enliven a dense network of mean- It is estimated that during the Middle Ages, the average distance covered by a pp. 75, 78, 79, 81, 82, 85 ingful relations between the works on display and the surrounding geographical During the installation of the exhibition, traveler ranged from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of 60 kilometers per day, Castello di Rivoli, October 2016 and cultural area, reawakening the rich layers of history that distinguish it. depending on whether the person was a messenger on a mission, a soldier march- ing with his comrades, a merchant accompanying his goods, or a pilgrim heading Marcella Beccaria: It seems to me that the relationship between the places of for Rome or, perhaps, the Holy Land, and depending on the means of transporta- research, production and display has always been part of your practice. For exam- tion—by horse, by cart, or simply on foot. These distances and modes of transport ple, I’m thinking about The Cave, one of your earliest works that placed you on the seem laughable by today’s standards. Yet it was with this speed and in these ways international map. The video, which shows you reciting by heart a Surah from the that, starting from the main communication axes established in Roman times, Quran, exists in three versions—one shot in Istanbul (2004), one in Amsterdam the constant transit of people, animals, and goods shaped an important part of (2005), and one in Hamburg (2005). In this way, you restore value to the indissol- the West’s network of roads as well as the history that was written across it. uble relationship that binds each work of art to a precise context. You also high- For visitors today who look out from one of the large windows located on light the multiple further meanings that blossom the moment a particular work is the north side of the Manica Lunga in the Castello di Rivoli (which, by the way, is moved from one place to another. As regards the works you are exhibiting at the 20 kilometers from the center of Turin) the distance from that medieval world Castello, the Cabaret Crusades series, which you’ve been developing since 2010, with its armed soldiers, traders, peasants, holy men and women, a world in slow I’d like to expand on this aspect of the intentional relationship that exists between but constant motion, seems to diminish—in fact, we seem to be transported fur- the place of production and the content of the work. But before talking about the ther back in time. The view embraces the lower part of the Val di Susa, an area films proper, let’s start with the setting you designed for this exhibition. You’ve whose morphology, characterized by numerous moraine hills, bears witness to conceived a show in which the idea of staging a journey is strongly present—a Wael Shawky in conversation with the presence and action of ancient glaciers and whose large plains, where the up- journey intended as something physical as well as mental, in search of new points Marcella Beccaria, Castello di Rivoli, per Po Valley begins, were probably covered around 10,000 years ago by an enor- 30 October 2016 of view while touching upon carefully selected locations. Let’s begin with the walls, mous lake, Lake Rivoli, whose remains supposedly lie in the current two lakes of which you’ve painted blue. As you know, the Manica Lunga hosted an exhibition the nearby Avigliana. But as soon as one’s gaze rises above the plains and hills, the here just before yours dedicated to Giovanni Anselmo, a pioneer of Arte Povera view from the Castello becomes undeniably medievalesque due to the stately who, upon returning to painting in the 1980s, began using ultramarine blue, high- presence of the Sacra di San Michele. Seemingly perched on the rocky spur of lighting the emotional and imaginative value of its distant origins, related to the Monte Pirchiriano, this Benedictine monastery (which is said to have inspired the Orient. Lapis lazuli, the stone used to make the precious color pigment, came description of the monastery at the heart of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose) from places such as Iran and Afghanistan. In the history of Western painting, es- was founded between 983 and 987. It can be considered a central juncture on a pecially beginning in the twelfth century, blue is the color of Christ’s garments, as long pilgrimage route dedicated to the Archangel Michael that, from Mont-Saint- well as the Virgin’s cape. Blue covers the vaults and most of the backgrounds con- Michel in France, reaches all the way to Monte Sant’Angelo in Puglia. ceived by Giotto for his frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (1303–5). It’s This area includes the traces of an even more important medieval route: the color of transcendence and in medieval Europe, by virtue of its distant origins the Via Francigena, a part of the road that once linked Chambery and Turin, over- and the lengthy manual process required to turn it into a pigment, blue was the looked by the Sant’Antonio di Ranverso complex in Rosta and the Benedictine most expensive color. In fact, some scholars have attributed the triumph of blue abbey of Novalesa, founded during the Frankish rule in 726 in Val Cenischia on the in the chapel in Padua to the considerable economic means of the Scrovegni fam- route to Moncenisio, the main Alpine pass between Italy and France. As clarified ily, who commissioned Giotto to make the paintings. Lapis lazuli decorations have Wael Shawky 74 Essays and Conversation 75 been found in Egyptian tombs, and blue is also the color used in certain mosques, creating a story it would be amazing, but it was going to be very risky. So, we like, for example, the Sultanahmet Camii mosque in Istanbul. Where does your started to work with the concept that the audience were going to take a trip blue come from and what does it mean? through the Manica Lunga—that was the goal. I was trying to avoid the idea Wael Shawky: For Manica Lunga it’s actually the same blue I used in dOCU- of exhibiting, let’s say, art objects—although of course we are exhibiting art: MENTA Kassel, the Serpentine Gallery in London, MoMA PS1 in New York, what’s important is to take this trip, as you said, in the sense of looking at K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, and Mathaf in history as if you’re looking at a scenography. Doha, and it’s become really significant for the Cabaret Crusades cycle. Originally, it came from a painting by Jean Fouquet of Pope Urban II giving MB: Yes, what you’ve conceived is truly an itinerary that highlights something his famous speech at the Clermont Council in 1095. What’s interesting is which, in my opinion, is at the heart of the Cabaret Crusades project: these works that Fouquet made the painting almost 400 years after the actual speech, don’t exactly deal with the Crusades, but with the history of the Crusades and the based exclusively on his imagination. He used this type of blue for the back- cultural constructions that have been made about them through writings and ground—or maybe this is my translation of the blue that he used. I decided painted images. This is a big difference, in which the use of marionettes for actors to make it almost a historical fact by using it as the background for all the obviously plays an essential role. Cabaret Crusades series. The speech by Pope Urban II was extremely signif- WS: Yes, and it’s also about the idea of the cabaret, the idea of setting up a icant for me, because it’s a historical speech that led to almost 200 years of show, something fake, something that you know is fake but at the same time Crusades, and it was supposedly the most important factor—the one that you enjoy. This is the idea—entertainment basically, a sort of gathering where really encouraged the Europeans to get involved in these wars in the Middle people speak about political events.

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