ILLUSTRATOR: GANZEER
Ganzeer is an Egyptian artist whose work plays at the intersection of forms as diverse as stencils and murals to comics and graphic design. In 2016, he was honored with the Global Thinker Award from Foreign Policy.
At Berkeley in 1980, Julio Cortázar taught a literature class and talked about the rise of consciousness of Latin American peoples to worldwide oppression and the potential of art to reflect on and incite illumination (if not action):
... more and more readers for whom a literary work continues to be not just an aesthetic event sufficient unto itself, but also one that is felt as an effluence of strengths, tensions, and situations that make it what it is and not something else. Readers such as these—who are more and more common in our countries—enjoy as much as anybody else the literary contents of a short story or a novel, but at the same time they come to this content with a questioning attitude. For these readers, the books we write are always literature, but they are also sui generis reflections of history, they are like flowers of a plant that can no longer be ignored because the plant is called land, nation, people, raison d’être, and destiny.
But at the same time, he was wary of art that solely had the “right” politics, concluding: “that bad literature and mediocre literature can’t convey anything efficiently.”
In your New York Times feature, “Hieroglyphics That Won’t Be Silenced,” you explained the meaning of your name: “‘bicycle chain’ because [you like] to think of artists as the mechanism that pushes change forward. ‘We are not the driving force,’ [you] said. ‘We are not the people pedaling, but we can connect ideas and by doing this we allow the thing to move.’” If you agree with the idea that mediocre and/or bad art cannot communicate anything effectively or efficiently, how do you walk the line between creating thoughtful work that is at the same time actionable for viewers?
Great question! In my mind there are essentially two sides to any work of art. The craft of the thing and then there’s the idea of the thing. Often times when people talk about good art vs. mediocre art, what they’re mostly referring to is the craft side of the art, which may include things like composition, anatomy, expressiveness, use of color and/or material and so on. With that in mind, I would argue that there’s plenty of “good art” that doesn’t communicate anything effectively, because there may not be much of an idea behind what all that great craft is being put to use for. The alternative is also true, someone may have a fantastic idea, but may have not yet mastered the skills to effectively communicate it. The sweet spot in my mind is when you have a convergence of both craft and idea.
But what is a good idea? This is where it gets tricky, especially in the “West”, particularly for two reasons:
1) A decades-long museum/art-school-driven campaign that has emphasized the self and the ego as the most glorious of artistic pursuits.
2) A hyper capitalist/consumerist socioeconomic existence that has emphasized commercial success as the benchmark for “good work.”
The truth in my mind exists somewhere in-between. Wherein the best ideas don’t necessarily ignore the self, but involve the self in relation to the world outside the self because no self exists in a vacuum. And those “best ideas” tend to be really, really good when they fill an obvious cultural vacuum, rather than ride the bandwagon de jour. Those who see “commercial success” as the benchmark for good work are only slightly off the mark in that their point-of-focus is on the monetary implications of the work rather than on the very obvious social implications: the work must speak to society, beyond the self.
I wouldn’t put so much emphasis on the necessity of immediate actionability, because it’s entirely likely that many of my influences were things I was exposed to . . . maybe ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. If we think of art as food for the mind and soul, well then there’s the food you prepare for immediate consumption, and there are also the seeds you scatter for future food to grow. Art is no different.
On your website, your work is described as the intersection of art, design, and storytelling (or Concept Pop), how do you define “Concept Pop”? And how do these various fields illuminate one another?
Concept Pop fills the vacuum between Conceptual Art and Pop Art (with all of its offspring be it “Urban Art”, “Urban Contemporary”, etc.). Wherein the former focuses primarily on presenting concepts and ideas with very minimal concern for aesthetics, and the latter is heavily aestheticized with very little concern for anything beyond that. Concept Pop “hits two birds with one stone” so to speak, in that it utilizes “pop” language, imagery, media, and/or delivery mechanisms specifically to express concepts and ideas rather than just for show.
In Restricted Frequency #139, your meeting with Elliot Colla appears marked by a mutual appreciation for “old printed matter, predominantly from Cairo” and Arabic poetry, which seems to have anticipated We Are All Things. What sparked the idea to collaborate? And how is your process different when working with someone else?
It’s my understanding that Elliot wrote the text for We Are All Things many many years ago, and didn’t really know what to do with it (it’s also my understanding that he’s got quite a lot of material of that nature). He had recently come across a copy of The Apartment in Bab El-Louk though, written by Donia Maher in a somewhat similar vein and illustrated/designed by myself in collaboration with Ahmad Nady. And that kind of lit the spark in Elliot’s mind to contact me about giving his text a similar treatment. He sent it my way, and I could almost see it right away. A couple months later, I had the entire thing illustrated and designed for him. It was really that straightforward.
Elliot’s initial idea was to print it himself on his home printer and staple it together, effectively making a very DIY-zine of the thing. I proposed approaching Radix Media about publishing it, because I’d recently been in touch with them and because it felt like it might be along the lines of the things they’re interested in, and when it came to print-making, they would do a much better job than either Elliot and I could do. Elliot agreed, not thinking much of it, but much to our glee Radix took it on!
From then on, it became a matter of adjusting the design to meet appropriate printing specs, which the Radix crew and I brainstormed and discussed over a couple sessions. All in all, the process wasn’t much different than if it weren’t collaborative, only because the working relationship between all parties involved was just so seamless and pleasant.
Of course, generally speaking collaborative projects don’t always go that way. But as a rule, it’s important to remember that with collaborative stuff, it’s totally normal and even vital for all parties involved to have a degree of creative input. Once any single person wants their “creative vision” to be the only vision, completely overpowering everyone else’s, well then it isn’t really very collaborative, is it?
And there’s totally a place for that kind of project. But the vast majority of the work I do involves me sitting alone in a room largely working on stuff that is entirely my own singular vision. So when I do get the opportunity to do something collaborative, I find great, great joy in the multi-input nature of the thing. I suppose it’s important to understand the “role” each person is meant to play, and respect that. As the writer of the text, it makes sense that Elliot would have final say on his text with no one coming in saying you can’t say this or that. As the illustrator/designer of the text, it makes sense that final say in that regard would be mine as long as I go about it in respect to the text those visuals are meant to go along with. As the print-makers of the book, it makes sense that Radix would get final say on how best to manifest the physical incarnation of the thing, with complete respect to the nature of the text/imagery/design they’re bringing to life.