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Tuesday, February 5, 2019

A Vist to Tunis - Part 5, A Visit to the Caricature Museum

When I was exploring the area around Tunis on my laptop computer, I ran my mouse pointer along the shore of Lake Qaroun and one of the first things to pop up was the Caricature Museum - a surprising find out in this area, I thought.

Lonely Planet has a short entry for the Fayoum Art Center Residency that describes it this way:
This project, run by painter Mohamed Abla hosts classes and resident artists from around the world in the cooler months of January and February; email him for information on upcoming workshops. For the casual visitor, the onsite Caricature Museum holds an interesting collection of Egyptian political cartoons.
You can be sure I was keeping an eye out for the museum as we strolled through Tunis.  A prominent banner marked the entrance, on a large piece of land with the museum sitting well back from the street.
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We approached the building and after a stroll through the gallery, we soon ran into Mohamed Abla's son, Ibrahim. Ibrahim was not particularly interested in collecting the entrance fee of $1.14 but was quite enthusiastic in his welcome.
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Ibrahim gave us a little background on his well-known father and the museum.  See this article in ArtSmart for a mini-bio of Mahmoud Abla and this article in Ahram Online for a full account of the Caricature Museum.  A longer biography of Abla can be found here.

Ibrahim invited us for tea, of course, and offered us a quick tour of the facilities where a workshop was underway.  A visit to the top of the classroom building afforded a pleasant view of the lake in the distance and we noted one artist-in-residence working on a painting that incorporates the blue theme of the village. A short chat with this artist revealed that she was from Berlin.
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The Caricature Museum features works primarily from Egyptian publications and is probably most appreciated by visitors much more fluent than Linda and I in both the local language and politics.
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This is my final post on the village of Tunis. It seems appropriate to close with this link to an article in Ahram Online describing a dispute between the government and the artists in Tunis.  That dispute closed the artist's facilities for a period back in May of 2017.  This should serve as a springboard to the next blog posts covering urban renewal in the heart of Cairo.

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