108 It has been 100 years since the bust of Nefertiti was curiously transported from Egypt to Germany, and there it has remained since. This may well have been Nefertiti in a nutshell – after all, she is a queen – but a show proposing a cup of tea with Her Majesty does more than the eye can see. Tea With Nefertiti is, for a start, the sophomore return to Mathaf for curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath – the dynamic duo awed audiences with their Told/ Untold/Retold exhibition as part of the museum’s inaugural shows in 2010. The pair get a kick out of telling stories – narratives from which we, as cultural enthusiasts, can learn from and be inspired. Through this show, they sought to contest previously held ways of looking at art and strip down existing and long-held views tied to geography, art history, cultural typecasting and means of display. Their show offers a thematic tri-angled perspective: that of the Artist , the Museum and the Public Tea With Nefertiti opened in parallel with Forever Now , an exhibition curated by fellow Mathaf returnee curator Dr Nada Shabout, and that sees rooms dedicated to Modern Arab artists – Saliba Douaihy, Ahmed Cherkaoui, Jewad Selim and Fahrelnissa Zeid – alongside a space allocated for Contemporary Iraqi artist Salem Al-Dabbagh. It was insightful, to say the least, and also complemented the sense of time vis-à- vis the Modernist era when considering Tea With Nefertiti The Discovery channel Just how we see art forms the crux of Tea With Nefertiti – a show that has been two years in the making and has seen Bardaouil and Fellrath scour libraries, archival material in multiple languages and even trace the descendants of some Modern artists in the exhibition. “It was a treasure hunt and a puzzle too. Excavation allows you to even reinterpret the contemporary moment,” says Bardaouil. “Most importantly, we are trying to build an art history.” The curators’ findings are astonishing – there are no records, for example, at L’École des Beaux Arts in Paris that show that Mahmoud Mokhtar (1891–1934) was a student there as has been widely believed (not that this discounts Mokhtar’s standing as the ‘father of Modern Egyptian sculpture’). In 1928, Dutch painter Kees van Dongen (1877–1968) staged an exhibition in Cairo in the space set up by Mokhtar. Swiss/German painter Paul Klee (1879–1940) visited Egypt in 1927 and created a series of works (hanging in Tea With Nefertiti ) that negotiated Ancient Egyptian icons and motifs. Modern Egyptian/French artist, Georges Sabbagh (1877–1951), shared a studio with Amedeo Modigliani in 1917 and painted a portrait of Modigliani’s wife. These examples share Egypt as a common denominator in terms of A CuP oF tEA, Your MAJEstY? However charming the name given to the groundbreaking exhibition, Tea With Nefertiti at Doha’s Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art is, it is not about the life and times of a beautiful Ancient Egyptian queen, nor does it revolve around artefacts from 4000BC. Myrna ayad reviews a land- mark show that proposes a new set of spectacles for the ways in which we perceive art. DohA’s CulturAl lAnDsCAPE In 2012 109 context and time – in the 19th century, the land of the Pharaohs prompted substantial archaeological excavations and brought about the establishment of numerous museums. The era also witnessed the end of colonial occupation, a heightened sense of nationalism, the independence of Arab states and subsequent wars in the region. Egypt, thus, is Tea With Nefertiti’ s departure point and mirrors the themes surrounding the Ancient Egyptian queen’s exit, that witnessed one too many topographical, symbolic and public interventions. A lot of air miles and literature later and Tea With Nefertiti opened at Mathaf last November with works by over 40 artists/collectives. Perhaps most significantly, it marks the first museum exhibition from the Arab world to tour internationally, with stops at the Institut du Monde Arabe, the Valencia Institute of Modern Art and Bozar: Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels slated this year. Tri-specTacleD The iconic Ancient Egyptian queen – now a member of the Egyptian Diaspora in Germany – has been privy to heated conversations regarding her various abodes. From her sculptor Thutmose’s workshop and numerous stops in between, Nefertiti finally relocated to Berlin’s Neues Museum in 2009. Her journeys have lived up to her name – ‘the beautiful one has come ’. In the Artist section, we see artworks exactly as their artists had intended for us to. Youssef Nabil’s portrait of Nefertiti is one example – the queen’s hand-coloured face invites an admiration of her beauty. Similarly, Mokhtar’s sculpture, Ibn Al-Balad (The Native) seeks to exemplify the artist’s proposal of an influential symbol – that of the Egyptian villager – through the enlargement of his head to highlight mental aptitude. Works by Klee, Modigliani and Giacometti are also in the Artist and all seek to negotiate the artists’ practices vis-à-vis Ancient Egyptian motifs. One of the rather humorous artworks here is Vik Muniz’s Tupperware Sarcophagus , Object (Relicario) , a piece which tackles exactly what we associate Ancient Egypt with – a visual of a preserved (Tupperware) era (sarcophagus). We meet the queen again in Museum through Candida Hofer’s photograph of Nefertiti in her current home at the Neues Museum. Here, she stands regal, commanding her rotunda, gazing towards us. We don’t look at the queen as such, but rather, within the context of the museum in which she rests. This happens again through works by Facing page, clockwise: Bassem Youssri. (Detail) It’s Not as Easy as it May Have Seemed to Be . Mixed media installation. Variable dimensions. Photography by Myrna Ayad. © Canvas Archives; Vik Muniz. Tupperware Sarcophagus, Object ‘Relicario’ 2010. Mixed media object. 76.2 x 185.4 x 63.5 cm; Nida Sinnokrot, KA (JCB, JCB) . 2009. 2 JCB 1CX backhoe arms. 460 cm x 255 cm. Image courtesy Sharjah Art Foundation; Terenuthis-Stele. Standing Adorant with Horus and Anubis . First century AD. Limestone. 35 x 29.5 x 4.5 cm. Photography by Sh Shalchi. Collection of Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum Hildesheim. Above:Fahrelnissa Zeid. (Detail) Réalités Nouvelles (New Realities) . 1954. Oil on canvas. 200 x 279.9 cm. All images courtesy Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha. EXHIBITIONS , 12 Sabbagh that had been shown in Paris in the 1920s, and which are juxtaposed with magnified exhibition reviews from that time. He had been compared to van Gogh, and also referred to as “the Egyptian Constructor”. Just why it was necessary to classify him is the point here, pushed further through the curators’ placement of Sabbagh’s French and Egyptian passports. Museum includes Emily Jacir’s A Sketch in the Egyptian Museum – alarming in nature, the video shows a janitor wipe a centuries-old stele with a moist cloth. Perhaps Nefertiti should remain in Germany after all? Throughout the exhibition are the figurines of Bassem Yousri’s specially commissioned work, which sees these characters look at and engage with works; at times, they ‘revolt’ against the museological theories in which they exist. public percepTions Nefertiti may have been flattered by the demand she generated over the last century, but she and Thutmose may also have been appalled when the artist collective Little Warsaw sought to ‘honour’ Her Majesty by placing her 20-kilogramme limestone bust onto a proportionally made headless bronze body. Material documenting this appropriation (shown at the Hungary Pavilion at the 2003 Venice Biennale) is placed within the Public . For the critically acclaimed Little Warsaw, the work was an homage; for Egyptian cultural officials, it was an offense which further strained relations between Egypt and Germany – just how a museum could allow such an intervention perplexed the former. Ala Younis’s installation sees how the iconoclasm of Nefertiti made its way onto sewing machines in 1952 in the hope of inspiring women to participate in Egypt’s modernisation projects. Ghada Amer’s Le Salon Courbé tackles public perceptions of the post – 9/11 world through a polished life-size salon; look a little closer and the word ‘terror’ is repeated in the sofas and wallpaper. Amer suggests that this terror has oozed into the very fabric of our consciousness. In the words of HE Sheikha Al-Mayassa Bint Hamad Al-Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums Authority, Tea With Nefertiti “presents an ever-pressing need to explore our perceptions and assumptions of reality.” Can we ever look at artworks the same way again? Perhaps not. Can we ever look at Nefertiti the same way again? Definitely not. The queen has issued a decree for new sets of spectacles. Even when looking at her.