Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi on art: How an Egyptian weaving village became a lesson in the power of giving
The National · Sultan Al Qassemi ·
What we can learn from Garya Mahmoud's The Fields and the Village
A busy village scene in the Upper Egyptian Delta depicts a crowd of men harvesting corn and placing it on the backs of animals of burden, while women look after the children nearby. In the bottom-left corner, four men gather around a fire, possibly hinting that the scene is set in the autumn months, coinciding with the end of the corn harvest season in Egypt.
The background is peppered with dome-topped houses, palm trees and birds. This scenic tapestry was created by Garya Mahmoud, one of the Ramses Wissa Wassef Art Centre’s first-generation weavers. The centre was founded by the prominent architect Ramses Wissa Wassef and his wife, Sophie Habib Gorgi, in 1951, and it initially employed 45 women and men in weaving, stoneware and batik painting. Ramses was behind several major projects, such as the Mahmoud Mokhtar Museum, opened in Cairo in 1962, and a string of churches and private residences across Egypt. Through the art centre, Ramses and Sophie envisioned a unique space that would give others opportunities that would allow them to earn a livelihood.
In a 2018 interview with Masrawy, Sophie, recalling the conversation that prompted the creation of the centre, stated: “One day [Ramses] said to me, 'Why don’t we look for a simple village with quiet people and start a project that brings the place to life and helps the villagers learn something different?'”
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