The last edition of the Youth Salon marked 35 years since its first edition in 1989, cementing a generational divide in the official art scene in Egypt and formalizing an age-based approach in seeing and understanding the works of visual artists working in Egypt (a probable and logical extension of the intrinsic nature of seniority of the Egyptian bureaucracy). Whether such demographic classification makes  sense or not (nothing seems to follow any semblance of common sense or rational thinking when it comes to the Egyptian bureaucracy), it definitely fits within the very rigid structures of the government-run Fine Arts Sector and its continuing system of seniority and quasi-clientelistic networks. Separating “younger” artists as a group, allows more senior members of the Sector, to “patronize” those talents and offer them “guidance”. Naturally none of that actually happens, and the reason why so many artists are keen to exhibit with the Sector, is an opportunity to a) exhibit work b) achieve some kind of visibility and exposure in collectors and galleries networks, locally, but also regionally. The Salon doesn’t give mentorship opportunities, nor does it give feedback to individual artists, nor does it explain why and how it chooses the artists it does. There is usually a very vague theme for each edition (not more than two paragraphs mentioned at the start of every Youth Salon catalog) and the rest is left to the audience to deduce and decipher.

For this year’s edition I decided to look back at the past five years, and tried to see if one can discern a pattern (understanding of course, that the human mind tends to create patterns even if there are none), whether for the jury’s own aesthetic preferences or the artists themselves in choices of mediums and themes. The past five years were a bit tumultuous witnessing a change of the Minister of Culture (three: Inas Abdel Dayem, Neveen El Kelany and Finally Ahmed Heno, the current minister), reflecting an equally politically volatile time for the Egyptian bureaucracy. Even when the head of the Sector remained the same (Walid Qanoush). 

To give a sense of scale, over a period of five years the Youth Salon exhibited for more than 1000 artists, over 600 of those were women, and more than  400 were male artists (as per the artists listed in YS catalogues). With painting being the main category (on average 59 artists per edition) and digital arts and installation being the category with the least number of participants (between 5-10 entries per edition) and the least interesting works. 
In general the Sector is very well documented and has a strong, stable online presence. In contrast to the “independent” scene, that has a much more doubtful presence. Most of the catalogues of the past editions are available online on the Sector’s website, along with detailed CVs of all the registered exhibiting artists, who exhibit at the Sector. A no mean feat considering that there are thousands of those artists by now. The catalogues are listed by year (going back to 2007) and can be downloaded as PDFs. While in some cases, the documentation is not ideal, and the titles and descriptions  of individual artworks can be absent, it is quite remarkable to find such a document readily, and publicly available, considering how every information related to the government is always politicized and inaccessible.

This year’s edition was curated by artist Mohammed Omar Tossoun, an Alexandrian sculptor and curator, along with other members of the jury. Looking at Mr. Tousson and his online presence, I found his instagram readily accessible, the IG account showed no political positions of any kind. And going back two years, it shows only one post dedicated to Lebanon. No trace of Palestine, with the exception of one post, titled “distance zero” (maybe a reference to the resistance attacking the enemy at no distance at all). This glaring absence is also manifested in this year’s edition. In more than 230 works, only two openly refer to Palestine in their imagery (Alaa Mohammed Ahmed and Omar Nasr El Din). It is a stunning omission, and a testament to a bureaucracy mired in political complicity and moral bankruptcy.

Alaa Mohammed Ahmed, Sound of Silence, ink and pastel on paper, 112 x 42 cm, 2024 (photo credit: Ismail Fayed)

Mohammed Sabry Shams El Din, oil on canvas, 210 x 125 cm, 2024 (Photo credit: Ismail Fayed)

Ahmed Amro Hamdy, Prisoner of Mud, oil on canvas, 2024 (a still from the 35th edition catalogue)

I ask myself a lot, what kind of art are people capable of doing during such times? When regimes practice absurd and idiotic censorship, that is equally savage and brutal, and people start internalizing this censorship and practice it against each other, what possibilities remain to create a work of art and display it on the walls of a government-owned, and government-run institution?

The answer is a lot of mediocre, inchoate, sometimes absurd and inscrutable artworks. A bizarre obsession with dolls, clowns and circus performers permeates the entire exhibition, across mediums too. The fascination with dolls endures over the past five editions (in the work of Asmaa Ashraf Gabr in the 30th edition, and the work of Rawan Ashraf Adwan in the 33rd edition) creating artworks that look like album covers of metal bands from the 1990s. An infantile kind of fascination with the macabre, and the grotesque executed poorly, conceptually and formally, somehow devolving into repulsive kitsch. Is that reference to a sense of public manipulation? A veiled hint at mass misinformation and propaganda? A stab at a political elite that actually acts like clowns? It is hard to tell, since clowns and dolls are not exactly very telling political symbols, even when their distortions imparts a sense of disturbing reality. 

Asmaa Ashraf Gabr (a still from the 30th edition catalogue)

Mohammed Amro Ahmed, Circus, collage and acrylic colors on canvas, 185 cm x 125 cm, 2024 (a still form the 35th edition catalogue)

Omnia Mohammed Sayed (a still from the 30th edition catalogue)

Hagar Barakat Salem (a still from the 30th edition catalogue)

Roda Khaled El Gendy (a still from the 31st edition catalogue)

Rothan Ashraf Adwan, Weakness Upon Weakness, colored clay, 120 x 60 cm, 2023 (a still from the 34th edition catalogue)

Osama Nasr El Din (photo credit: Ismail Fayed)

Salah El Din Ahmed Mohammed, Separation Room no. 12 from 10 to 11 July, oil on canvas, 120 x 100 cm, 2023 (photo credit: Ismail Fayed)

Mr. Tossoun of course doesn’t organize the Salon by himself, there is a committee and a whole sector behind the process, and it's incredible to think that none of those people would question this absence of solidarity with Palestine and any consideration to one of the world's bloodiest conflicts, if not the bloodiest. It is hard to believe that out of more than 230 artists none of them, save two, submitted work reflecting on the genocide or showing solidarity to Palestine. This normalized absence of anything remotely political is interesting and frightening, in the sense that Egyptian officials and those working with the government have internalized terrifying levels of self-censorship and complicity.  

Some works have a possible political reference or symbolism (more straight forward as in Mohammed Sabry Shams El Din’s sombre painting of prisoners lined up against a backdrop of gigantic, hovering flies and Ahmed Amro Hamdy’s painting of a young man, tied, laying on the floor, at the feet of three standing men, with only their feet showing, the painting shows a powerfully menacing impression of the partially visible men). The majority, though, look as if they might have been painted in a parallel universe, where Egypt is not facing massive economic hardships, stifling political oppression, and its worst governance crisis since the late 1980s. 

Rawazen Ashraf Adwan, several parts, 140 x 60 x 37 cm (a still from the 33rd edition catalogue)

Mahmoud Mohammed Senoussy, oil on canvas, 200 cm x 90 cm, 2024 (a still from the 35th edition catalogue)

Salema Mohammed Tarek, Play Midfeed, pencil, charcoal pencil, crayons and mixed media, 2024 (a still from the 35th edition catalogue)

Heba Mohasen El Kotoby (a still from the 31st edition catalogue)

Radwa Ahmed Mahfouz, Marionette puppets waiting the call of freedom, color inks and water colors, 140 cm x 50 cm, 2024 (a still from the 35th edition catalogue)

Perhaps the biggest breakthroughs come through the representations of women and contemporary portraiture. This is probably where most of the interesting ideas and methods are presented. Over the past five years there has been quite a remarkable shift in representing women as in the work of Omnia Mohammed Sayed (YS 30), Heba Mohsen El Kotoby ( YS 31), Asmaa Wagdy Qonswa (YS 32), and from this edition Farah Sayed Abdel Hayy and Sara Karim Samir.  Even among those interesting representations, there is even the presence of usually marginalised bodies (bodies that are visibly overweight) as in the works of Hagar Barakat Salem (YS 30) and Aya Mohammed Khalil (YS 32 and 34).  And yet with those breakthroughs, there is something slightly odd that more than half the artists are women and the majority are veiled but we rarely see veiled women as subjects represented. A dissonance that always occurs between the idealized and the real but also one that carries extremely contentious politics surrounding women and their bodies and the limits of their visibility in the public eye.

Kerollos Shawky Saad, Mirage, mixed media, 2024 (a still from the 35th edition catalogue)

Soha Hassan El Mosly, a heading saying, Postpartum Depression is Real! (a still from the 32nd edition catalogue)

Riham Abdel Wahab El Morsy, Alexandria and the Blocks, oil on canvas, 110 x 120 cm (a still from the 32nd edition catalogue)

Reem Mohammed Mahmoud, Koromba Wonders?, Ink, crayons and acrylic on wooden board, 126 cm x 86 cm, 2024 (photo credit: Ismail Fayed)

Even male portraiture also had a moment of discovery as in the work of Kerollos Shawky Saad (YS 35) and Amr Mostafa Fahmy (YS 35), bringing to mind representation of the male body, and questions about its idealized forms and how it can be painted on canvas.

Amr Mostafa Fahmy, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 150 cm, 2024 (a still from the 35th edition catalogue)

In a surprising nod to other contemporary Arab and Egyptian artists, whose work falls outside the purview of the Fine Arts Sector, Aysha Mohamed Sameh and Salah El Din Ahmed Mohammed seem to pay tribute to Syrian artist Marwan Kassab-Bachi (1934–2016) and Egyptian artist Ahmed Morsi (b. 1930) respectively. Aisha made distorted portrait with a strong expressionist feel while Salah mirrored Morsi’s dreamy, soft palette and forms.

Aysha Mohammed Sameh, oil on paper and canvas, 70 x 30 cm, 2024 (photo credit: Ismail Fayed)

Marwa Magdy Abdel Ghany (a still from the 31st edition catalogue)

Asmaa Wagdy Qonswa, Nostalgia, charcoal pencil, 100 x 70 cm (a still from the 32nd edition catalogue)

The other genre that witnessed a certain kind of interesting development is landscape and urban/social reality. In the works Nahla Abdel Hamid (YS 32), Riham Abdel Wahab El Morsy (YS 32), Mohammed Hussein Abdel Baqi (YS 34) and in this year’s edition Eman Nagy Ahmed and Yehia Hanafy Mahmoud. It is rare to see this intuitive embrace of the city’s changing realities and built environment and to reflect that in a genre like painting or drawing.

Nahla Abdel Hamid, Inside the Circle, mixed media, 4 parts, 120 x 80 cm each (a still from the 32nd edition catalogue)

Eman Nagy Ahmed, 2 round, Mixed media, oil pastel and acrylic on canvas, 250 x 80 cm, 2024 (photo credit: Ismail Fayed)

Mohammed Mahmoud El Shazly (a still from the 30th edition catalogue)

Aya Mohammed Khalil, Food Gluttony, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 60 cm, 2023 (a still from the 34th edition catalogue)

Yehia Hanafy Mahmoud, Virtual, oil on canvas, 300 x 150 cm , 2024 (a still from the 35th edition catalogue)

Perhaps sculpture remains as the other medium with subtle and interesting work. Over the past five years several young artists produced work that ranged from elegant formalism (Mohammed Mahmoud El Shazly YS 30, Marwa Magdy Abdel Ghany YS 31, and Ahmed Mohammed Abdallah YS 33) , to playful materialities and ideas Nadine Said Ezz Edine YS 34) to stark representations of reality (Rothan Ashraf Adwan YS 34 and Amr Atef Darwish YS 35)

Nadine Said Ezz Edine, Personal Sail Boat, polyester, base 59 x 15 x 7.5 cm, statue 32 x 18 x 12 cm, 2023 (a still from the 34th edition catalogue)

There is something inconclusive about the Youth Salon, when considered in hindsight. There are no hard and fast conclusions one can make about it. The past five years alone show that in every edition, the majority of the works are recycled (whether in form or in concept), with exception of using series as a format of presenting work, many works come across as immature or even badly executed. In more digital media, the glaring lacunae are even more visible, with work that is often “half-baked” and visually confusing. Out of every 200 or so artists presenting maybe less than 5% show promise or present something that shows formal but also conceptual coherence. But even with that slim margin, in every edition there artists and works that show a great deal of promise. The hope that the Salon remains to be a possible springboard for those artists to launch their practice in exciting and meaningful ways. The same way the Salon did for many former generations of artists over the past three decades.

Farah Sayed Abdel Hayy, Motherhood, oil colors, 100 x 100 cm, 2024 (a still from the 35th edition catalogue)

Mohammed Hussein Abdel Baqi, mixed media, 120 x 180 cm and 180 x 25 cm, 2023 (a still from the 34th edition catalogue)

Ahmed Mohammed Abdallah, Polyester, two parts, 110 c 50 x 60 cm each (a still from the 33th edition catalogue)

Amr Atef Darwish, Heroes of Steel, white Egyptian clay colored with dyes, 100 x 64 x 35 cm, 2024 (a still from the 35th edition catalogue)