Inji Efflatoun, An Egyptian Artist Who Traced Her Own Path

As a teenager in Cairo in the early 1940s, Inji Efflatoun made two great discoveries: art and the Communist Party. Although she was from an elite French-speaking background, Efflatoun chose to “re-Egyptianize” herself, pursue painting and throw herself full-heartedly into anti-imperialist, feminist and leftist agitation. She was eventually arrested during President Nasser’s repression of Communists in the early 1960s. It was in prison that she embarked upon the most productive stage of her career as an artist. Today, her prison portraits and the vibrant, luminous paintings of Egyptian rural life she painted after her release are iconic. In this episode we speak to Ahmed Gobba and Avery Gonzales, co-translators of Efflatoun’s 1993 memoir, “The Memoir of Inji Efflatoun: From Childhood to Prison.” The memoir is the nucleus of a new book, The Life and Work of Inji Efflatoun, published by SKIRA and edited by Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi and Suheyla Takesh. It comes out in the US on October 7 and is available to pre-order now. You can view a digitalized collection of Efflatoun’s work on the Barjeel Art Foundation’s website and read a review of the book in the National by Razmig Bedirian. This episode was produced in collaboration with the Barjeel Art Foundation -- an independent Sharjah-based institution, founded in 2010 by Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi to preserve, exhibit and research one of the most extensive collections of modern and contemporary art from the Arab World. One of the Barjeel Art Foundation’s objectives is developing a public platform to foster critical dialogue around art practices, to convey nuanced Arab histories beyond the borders of culture and geography. For more information about the Barjeel Art Foundation’s activities and exhibitions, please visit www.barjeelartfoundation.org You can subscribe to BULAQ wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Twitter @bulaqbooks and Instagram @bulaq.books for news and updates. If you’d like to rate or review us, we’d appreciate that. If you’d like to support us as a listener by making a donation you can do so at https://donorbox.org/support-bulaq. BULAQ is co-produced with the podcast platform Sowt. Go to sowt.com to check out their many other excellent shows in Arabic, on music, literature, media and more. For all things related to Arabic literature in translation you should visit ArabLit.org, where you can also subscribe to the Arab Lit Quarterly. If you are interested in advertising on BULAQ or sponsoring episodes, please contact us at [email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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