reading4

Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy”, Gerald Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 134-141.


The interviewer, Gerald Matt is the director of Kunsthalle Vienna has worked as a curator for a long time. This interview is from his book, Interviews, which he interviewed many prominent artists around the idea of power and exchange. His interest in that issue shows well in the interview with Amal Kenawy as he carries out the interview around the issues of her identity, her background as an artist and the situations within her county of birth, Egypt.

Amal Kenawy is an Egyptian artist who is interested in the same issue with Matt, ‘the influence of society on humans, on how society affects their understanding of certain events or feelings.’[1] She argues that certain identities and ‘values and codes of conduct’[2] incorporated by the society are expressed naturally in the outcome. She thinks that her art reflects Egyptian society ‘as an individual cannot remove or separate himself from his social and cultural environment, his perception of events is no doubt tied to them.’[3]

She explains about the situation in Egypt that the government mainly owns the institutions and the galleries. This is problematic because it tends to limit the ways of articulating ideas in a lot of different perspective and resulted in lack of research. A Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells says that ‘institutional systems reflect power relations’[4] and this is probably why Kanawy prefers to produce independent films rather than getting institutional support which can result in controlled and censored environment of making art. This example of the Egyptian government shows how the power interferes with an individual’s way of thinking to keep the dominance over because ‘the way people think determines the fate of norms and values on which societies are constructed.’[5] This was something to think about as a student of an institution, which I guess gets funding and support from the government, although the situation here in New Zealand and in Egypt might be quite different. I think people in the position of power should realise that bounding control can only result in degradation. What eventually would gain them the power in the future are the new and different ideas flourishing in the generalized and even more globalised world from individuals’ distinctive research.



[1] Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy”, Gerald Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135

[2] Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy”, Gerald Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135

[3] Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy”, Gerald Matt ed., Interviews 2, Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008, pp. 135

[4] Castells, Manuel. “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), p.239

[5] Castells, Manuel. “Communication, Power and Counter power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007), p.238