Draft:Tarek Abou El Fetouh

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Tarek Abou El Fetouh is a curator born in Cairo, Egypt, and based in Brussels, Belgium. He studied architecture at the University of Ain Shams in Cairo, where he started his career as an art director and scenographer for theatre before moving to curating art projects with a focus on interdisciplinary art practices. He curated numerous exhibitions including the 9th edition of the Sharjah Biennial (2009), the exhibition for the 6th edition of Home Works (2013) organised by Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, the exhibition Rituals of Signs and Metamorphosis (2018) at Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing, and the public art program of Expo Dubai 2020 in Dubai in 2021. In 2021, he was appointed as a senior curator and director of performance department at Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates.

Theatre Scenography

During his studies, Tarek Abou El Fetouh joined El Warsha Theatre Troupe in Cairo in 1989 as assistant scenographer. In1993, after graduating, he designed the scenography for the company’s critically-acclaimed play Tides of Night, which toured extensively in regional and international festivals such as LIFT, London's International Festival of Theatre, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC, and in Paris, Rabat, Amman, Beirut and across Egypt in Cairo, Minya, Alexandria, and other places. For the play, he developed a scenography based on the building techniques of traditional Egyptian tent-making, which required intensive research into popular celebrations known as mouleds. Tent building techniques in Egypt vary from one region to the other, and sometimes from one neighbourhood to another, with tent builders taking special pride in their particular skills and styles. Abou El Fetouh worked in collaboration with traditional tents builders from Al Sayeda Zeinab neighbourhood to develop a special, versatile design adapted to the various requirements of contemporary theatre.

Abou El Fetouh created over 23 different tent designs for El Warsha Theatre Troupe, in addition to tents for storyteller Chirine El Ansary and the Dutch theatre group Bonheur’s performance in Cairo.

Young Arab Theatre Fund and Meeting Points

Founding Young Arab Theatre Fund

Abou El Fetouh has established initiatives in the Arab world and sought to develop innovative conversations among practitioners both regionally and internationally. He founded the Young Arab Theatre Fund (YATF), a Brussels-based foundation working in the field of contemporary visual and performance arts, first informally in 1999, then as a legal entity in 2002, serving as its director until 2014. The association was dedicated to providing funds for young artists and directors living and working in the Arab world, with the long-term goal of encouraging the development and sustainability of independent theatre and performing arts in the region. Its programmes included providing support for production, touring, travel, events and alternative spaces. YATF was renamed Mophradat in 2015.

Re-habilitation of spaces

A crucial part of Abou El Fetouh’s work through YATF was designing and re-habilitating abandoned or misused buildings for use as cultural venues, mainly between 2000 and 2006. These spaces included the Garage Theatre in Alexandria, Collectif 12 in Paris, Windows Theatre in El-Minia, The House in Amman, The Factory Space in Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, Ness El Fen in Tunisia and the Geneina Theatre in Cairo.

Meeting Points Festival

Abou El Fetouh initiated the Meeting Points Festival of Contemporary Arts (MP) in 2003, which grew out of YATF’s work on supporting and restructuring art spaces in the Arab world to make them more capable and better equipped to initiate, host, and tour new productions in dance, music, theatre, film, performance, and the visual arts.  He curated the first four editions of the festival (MP1 to MP4), which took place in several cities in the Arab world. Abou El Fetouh then served as the artistic director of MP5 with curator Frie Leysen (2007-2008), MP6 with curator Okwui Enwezor (2011-2012), and MP7 with the Zagreb-based collective WHW (2013-2014).

Curatorial practice

Tarek Abou El Fetouh first engaged in curatorial work when he joined the curatorial team of the Amman International Theatre Festival, Amman (1996 -2000). He went on to curate projects in the Arab world and internationally such as It’s Happening in the Garage, Jesuit Cultural Center, Alexandria (2000), DisORIENTation, House of World Cultures, Berlin (2003), Windows (a multidisciplinary festival of contemporary arts), Minya and Cairo (2004), and Roaming Inner Landscapes, Bibliotheca Alexandrina and Garage Theatre, Alexandria (2004).

Sharjah Art Biennial 9

In 2009, he was one of the two curators of the Sharjah Art Biennial 9, and produced a program under the title Past of the Coming Days. The program presented commissioned and existing works by over 24 artists in numerous locations across Sharjah's historical center and port. Artists from the program earned two of the Biennial prizes including its grand prize awarded to Studio CAMP.

Inspiration from Arab scholars

Tarek Abou El Fetouh curated the exhibition for the forum, Home Works 6 by Ashkal Alwan, in Beirut. The exhibition, selected by curator Okwui Enwezor for Artforum as one of the best shows of 2013, drew inspiration from Ibn Arabi's unique perspective on time as a malleable concept and place as a fixed representation of time. It employed techniques of moving through space and time, reenacting three significant exhibitions from critical historical periods: the inaugural Alexandria Biennial in 1955, the First Arab Art Biennial in Baghdad in 1974, and the China/Avant-Garde exhibition in Beijing in 1989.

In 2015, Abou El Fetouh curated the art exhibition Lest the Two Seas Meet at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2015). The exhibition was inspired by concepts written by the Arab philosopher Ibn Arabi, and included works by 35 international artists.

Also inspired by Ibn Arabi's concepts of time, Tarek Abou El Fetouh curated a two-part exhibition titled The Time is Out of Joint, which was organised by Sharjah Art Foundation and Asia Culture Center, Gwangju (2016). The exhibition draws inspiration from the idea that time is a flexible dimension and place can be seen as time frozen in space. It delves into three significant historical art events influenced by social and political contexts: the First Alexandria Biennial in 1955, the First Biennale of Arab Arts in Baghdad in 1974, and the China/Avant-Garde Exhibition in Beijing in 1989. Furthermore, the exhibition endeavors to provide a preview of a future event, the Equator Conference 2022 in Yogyakarta. Each part of the exhibition presented commissioned art projects by acclaimed artists and filmmakers. Abou El Fetouh co-edited with artist and curator Ala Younis a two-volume publication under the same title. With over 1100 pages, the bi-lingual publication included contributions from notable thinkers such as Kwame Anthony Appiah, Judith Butler, Faisal Darraj, Chan Koonchung, Ahdaf Soueif, Hilmar Farid, and Vandana Shiva.

Projects in China

Abou El Fetouh has been researching the art scene in China since 2011. Beside the topics covered in the exhibitions projects and involving several Chinese artists and thinkers in them, Abou El Fetouh curated two art exhibitions in China; Captive of Love in 2017 and Rituals of Signs and Metamorphoses in 2018. The two art exhibitions were at the Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing.

Projects in the Arabian Gulf

For Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism, Abou El Fetouh curated six edititions of Durub Al Tawaya, an annual performance event at Abu Dhabi Art between 2013 and 2018.

In 2019, Abou El Fetouh was appointed as the curator of the Public Art Programme for Expo 2020 Dubai. He commissioned 11 permanent public art pieces on the Expo 2020 Dubai site, which had an area 15,000 square meters. The site was inaugurated in 2021, and throughout its 182 days, the site saw large number of visitors that reached around 24,102,967 visitors. The works remains on the site which is known today as Expo City Dubai. Expo 2020's theme of "Connecting Minds, Creating the Future" inspired Abou El Fetouh to revisit the "Book of Optics," a work by Ibn Al Haytham. The project proposed a multifaceted exploration, encompassing the literal translation of the Arabic title as the "Book of Sceneries," and drew historical connections between art, science, and philosophy in the region during periods of extensive trade and intercultural relations. Reflections by Homi K. Bhabha, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, Taneli Kukkonen, and Nader El Bizri on the topic appeared in the project's publication, On the Book of Sceneries, co-edited by Tarek Abou El Fetouh and Ala Younis, and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.

Tarek Abou El Fetouh is currently Senior Curator and Director of the Performance Department of Sharjah Art Foundation.