Artist Wael Shawky: ‘I believe that history is a human creation’ – Financial Times

24 June 2025

In the southern French city of Arles, Wael Shawky is building his own version of Mount Vesuvius inside a former ironworks. It’s typical of the Egyptian artist, who is not one to shy away from working at grand scale and this summer has exhibitions opening in both Arles and Edinburgh.

In France, a film that interweaves the origin stories of Greek and Egyptian myths will be on view at the end of an internal street lined with kiosks. In these little booths, with outer walls finished in deep pink stucco, the masks, jars and animals in clay, bronze and glass that appear on screen have come to rest in perfect three dimensions. Meanwhile in Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery, the exhibition includes the third film in a trilogy called the “Cabaret Crusades”. “The Secrets of Karbala” (2015) tells the story of the bloodiest period of the Crusades, from the 12th to 13th centuries, though it loops back and forwards in time over 400 years. It is two hours long and involved a team of 300. So mountains are quite within the artist’s reach.

Shawky, 53, seems unflustered when I meet him at the Parc des Ateliers in Luma Arles, where his show is taking shape. Brush in hand, he is working on a large painting at one side of the Grande Halle, a 5,000 sq metre ex-industrial ironworks where trains were once built and repaired. Fantastical creatures in shades of blue and violet, with bowed heads and trailing fronds, are conjured by his hand — a process he describes as “automatic”. “A drawing can take a day, an hour, 10 minutes,” says Shawky, his face framed by curly black hair. “It’s what I do instead of speaking or writing.”

Read the full interview in the Financial Times here.