If the game is worth the candle: the Aswan Dam
It is not often that a public work becomes the cause of a war and subsequently the inspiration for works of art as well as films and novels. In this case it was a dam and it was a vital issue both for energy issues and because the water collected could increase the land for agriculture by 70%; in a backward, overpopulated country with insufficient agricultural production this would have been a turning point.
Only a few years earlier, the monarchy had been overthrown there and a group of military men had come to power promising development and an end to corruption. The symbolic importance of the barrage was such that the Ministry of Culture offered grants to artists who wished to work on the subject; many of the greatest painters and photographers of the time joined in, but the most interesting results came from those who maintained a critical attitude within the limits allowed by the regime.
The Aswan Dam and the Suez Crisis
Which work are we referring to? It is the Aswan Dam that takes us back seventy years in time.
To recap: in 1956, Colonel Nasser ‘s Egypt was looking for help in building a much larger and technically sophisticated sluice. The French had little to hope for because the sending of arms to the Algerian independence frightened them; on the other hand, Paris guaranteed Israel military equipment and expertise.
The British and the Americans considered a soft loan through the World Bank, but the fact that Egypt was buying armaments from the Russians was an obstacle; moreover, Egypt’s official recognition of Communist China annoyed President Dwight Eisenhower and his Foreign Secretary John Foster Dulles. For them, in fact, the Egyptian military regime looked too far East and indeed they saw the seeds of an alliance with enemy forces in the midst of the Cold War. However conspicuous, a loan would not have changed the direction of Egyptian foreign policy.
The nationalisation of the Suez Canal
Desperate times call for desperate measures: after being elected president, Nasser surprisingly announced the nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, until then in Franco-British hands.
On balance, Egypt could finance the work through the collection of ship passages if only the agreements did not limit the revenue to 7% of the total; with the confiscation, however, everything could be collected.
For Nasser, Aswan was well worth a war – and so it was. Indeed, the Franco-British military intervention with Israel risked leading to World War III; the conflict lasted little more than a week, but UN forces had to intervene and the consequences were felt for a long time.
From a military point of view, the defeat for Egypt was humiliating, while the project was revived three and a half years later: the conditions were created for a collaboration with theUSSR, which financed the work as well as designing it.
Ragheb Ayad and human labour fatigue
Rather than the laying of the foundation stone, it was an explosion that started the work on 9 January 1960. Shortly thereafter, artists including Ragheb Ayad (1892-1982), one of the first Egyptians to train in Europe and to hold institutional positions in his country, began to arrive.
His Aswan (1964) is composed vertically, showing us a narrow canyon in the background and a multitude of workers at work. The real protagonist of the painting is fatigue, for neither excavators nor motor vehicles are visible, but only pulleys, spades and pickaxes: were it not for the canyon, one could mistake them for slaves intent on building pyramids.
The workers are quickly sketched and their features are indistinguishable, lacking individuality. The perspective Ayad offers here is ahistorical, as it creates a trait d’union between the past and the present based on the contribution of those working in harsh conditions and in inhospitable environments, rendered effectively with a very limited palette.
Menhat Helmy and the monumentality of the site
The engraver Menhat Helmy (1925-2004) also focused on the work aspect but did not participate in the ministerial programme: she wanted to remain independent.
In 1964 he produced four etchings that reveal, despite their small size, the enormity of the undertaking. The cranes and scaffolding required to dam the waters appear gigantic: and indeed it was the largest dam in the world.
The swarming of the workers and their vehicles gives the idea of a modern, organised construction site, where the efforts for realisation can be appreciated in a context of innovation and change.
The Nubians and the vanishing world
The construction caused the displacement of more than one hundred thousand Nubians from their areas as well as the removal of entire archaeological sites: an artificial lake was formed on the border with Sudan that would flood an area of thousands of square kilometres.
This is why an artist originally from the Upper Nile, Tahia Halim (1919-2003), focused on the local populations and their traditions, documenting their features with anthropological care during a trip organised by the Ministry of Culture shortly before the 1962 flood.
His works are reminiscent of traditional Nubian paintings, poor in definition but with delicate luminosity and basic colours. What is striking is the serenity expressed by their faces, especially in such an extreme situation: the local communities, in fact, had no chance to oppose or negotiate their relocation with the government, also because they were considered extraneous to the context of the anti-colonial revolution.
For the authorities, they were not Egyptians, and the fact that many of them were Christians accentuated their difference in an era of exaggerated nationalism. With these paintings, Halim bore witness to a world that was about to disappear forever, and they therefore have documentary as well as artistic value.
Hamed Owais and the art of the regime
In this regard, it is no coincidence that a regime artist like Hamed Owais (1919-2011) completely removes any element of the indigenous presence on site: At the Aswan Dam (1965) shows workers without recognisable features but integrated in a modern industrial context, a novelty for Egypt. All around is nothingness.
For Owais, of national-Marxist orientation, the future of the working class coincided with that of the state: and the dam as well as the Suez Canal were the pillars of this collectivist and anti-colonial social pact. If then someone had to pay the price – those who fell at work due to a poor safety culture, the Nubians or whoever – patience.
As in any totalitarian regime, the common good is realised to the detriment of the individual good.
Egyptian art, propaganda and nationalism
As visually appealing and well-crafted as they were, these (and many other) works were intended for a very small elite of big-city intellectuals: one therefore wonders why the state wanted to patronise them, and why several independents decided to be there.
First of all, the celebration of the feat was intended to cover up the miserable failure of the war: the artwork, photos and films – including those of the most famous filmmaker of the time, Youssef Chahine – would remain to prove that the sacrifice made was worth it.
Secondly, John Curley wrote, Suez and Aswan had become metaphors for Egyptian nationalism: in fact, Nasser intended his successes to be opposed precisely to the upper middle class, entrepreneurs and intellectuals who looked at him with suspicion – if not, as historical research is increasingly clear, with hostility – after the dissolution of political parties, the closure of all independent media, extra-judicial arrests, torture and restrictions on personal freedom by the regime.
He was grinding out facts, that much was certain, albeit at a very high price.
Finally, it should not be overlooked that these works were destined to circulate internationally: they would thus become a vehicle for propaganda that expressed itself on the one hand through an industrial aesthetic, as in the case of Owais, and on the other hand through a rural one, as in Halim; only the former would inexorably sweep away the latter.
In the turmoil of the Cold War, there was no room for a romantic idea of the past, least of all in Nasser’s revolutionary ideology: change came with the force of a steamroller, with no regard for those who fell under it.
Read more
We are your soldiers. How one man remade the Arab world by Alex Rowell, Simon and Shuster, London; 2023.
‘Future tense.Hamed Owais and the Aswan high dam’ by Kristina Centore, Sequitur, 17 July 2020.
‘The high dam’ by Effat Naghi (1966), Barjeel Art Foundation
