DOC Collective Creation in Contemporary Performance by Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva in Arts-Photography

Description

In the 1980s; Egypt witnessed a growing revival of religiosity among large sectors of the population; including artists. Many pious stars retired from art; ldquo;repentedrdquo; from ldquo;sinfulrdquo; activities; and dedicated themselves to worship; preaching; and charity. Their public conversions were influential in spreading piety to the Egyptian upper class during the 1990s; which in turn enabled the development of pious markets for leisure and art; thus facilitating the return of artists as veiled actresses or religiously committed performers.Revisiting the story she began in ldquo;A Trade like Any Otherrdquo;: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt; Karin van Nieuwkerk draws on extensive fieldwork among performers to offer a unique history of the religious revival in Egypt through the lens of the performing arts. She highlights the narratives of celebrities who retired in the 1980s and early 1990s; including their spiritual journeys and their influence on the ldquo;pietizationrdquo; of their fans; among whom are the wealthy; relatively secular; strata of Egyptian society. Van Nieuwkerk then turns to the emergence of a polemic public sphere in which secularists and Islamists debated Islam; art; and gender in the 1990s. Finally; she analyzes the Islamist project of ldquo;art with a missionrdquo; and the development of Islamic aesthetics; questioning whether the outcome has been to Islamize popular art or rather to popularize Islam. The result is an intimate thirty-year history of two spheres that have tremendous importance for Egyptmdash;art production and piety.