Shifting Art Constellations and the Non-Aligned Movement in Egypt

My contribution examines the effects of the political imaginaries generated by the Non-Aligned Movement on art and exhibition practices in Postwar Egypt. By focusing on the aftermath of the Bandung Conference held in Indonesia in 1955, I would like to question the artistic dimensions of new alliances and their repercussions on artistic approaches and cultural policies. I propose to investigate how Nasserist ideologies regarding Afro-Asian solidarities were generated by cultural state projects, such as the Alexandria Biennale and the role it played in reconfiguring new geographies of power and in activating anti-imperialist discourses. I also suggest to take a closer look at the potentialities of social realism and the multiple translations of a “revolutionary art” oscillating between state propaganda and artistic emancipation. Overall, I wish to interrogate how reimagined identities both national and transnational were constitutive of Egyptian modernism in the context of the Cold War