Sameh el-Halawany is an artist who is using his talent to preserve culturally-unique and architecturally-distinct places in Alexandria, Egypt, that are threatened by the external forces of industry, urban development, and government seizure. Egypt is losing much of its cultural character due to rapid urbanization and industrialization, and Sameh and his organization, Gudran Association for Arts and Development, seek to restore these threatened places for historic preservation. Sameh uses art as a tool to enhance the cultural characteristics, the aesthetics of daily life, and the uniqueness of each community to allow the neighborhood to assert itself and fight for its right to exist.
Gudran worked with a small fishing village along the Mediterranean Sea to restore the structural features, paint the walls of homes, and decorate fishing boats, which gained attention and publicity worldwide and protected the village from forced eviction.
Sameh has partnered with an international community of artists to collaborate with Gudran in their efforts to use art in their pursuit of social justice and cultural preservation. Through his organization, Sameh has served directly over three hundred community members.
Sameh seeks to create a cultural and artistic atmosphere in local communities, honoring their special and unique characteristics leading to the liberation of the imagination in order to solve common problems in creative ways that simplify lives and futures. Gudran supports artistic work among different sectors of society as a way of discovering creative potential, as well as giving artists the possibility to activate their sense of social responsibility and participate in the process of social change.
In 2009, Sameh underwent a journey of exploration to identify new places for the development of future project work. He received funding from the Foundation for the Future to launch another project in Alexandria, which uses the local cafes as a new location of large scale artistic activities and practices in the streets. One of the objectives of this project is to enhance youth community participation, working with those who have especially limited access to social and artistic activities. He is focusing his work on downtown areas that are centers of commercial and industrial activity, have little artistic presence, and suffer from a loss of identity. Sameh works in partnership with local communities in these neighborhoods to build a base of volunteers, particularly youth, to get involved in the revitalization projects in order to gain social support for the project going forward.
To Contact Sameh:
info@gudran.com
Tel: 002034844226