Chant Avedissian; Icons of the Nile
03 Painting, Middle East Artists, with Footnotes, 3
Icons of the Nile , c. 1993
Gold and silver acrylic paint, gouache and hand-coloured stencil on cardboard, in twenty-one parts
Each: 52.5 by 72.6cm.; 20 5/8 by 28 5/8 in.
Private collection
Chant Avedissian was born in 1951 in Cairo, the son of Armenian refugees who fled the Turkish incursions in 1915–16. After studying fine art at the School of Art and Design in Montreal and applied arts at the National Higher School of Decorative Arts in Paris during the 1970s, Avedissian returned to Egypt. He fused the techniques, concepts and cosmopolitan experiences acquired abroad with the heritage of his Armenian-Egyptian background to produce striking commentaries on the world around him. His artistry ranges from photography to costume and textile design to the painted stencils seen here. His relationship with Hassan Fathy, a well-known Egyptian architect who advocated the use of local materials and craftsmanship, challenged Avedissian to reconsider local traditions of artistry and to appreciate the properties of common materials…