I covered Engy Al Garf’s innovative heat map mural in Giza back in November, and impossibly drawn in by her thoughtful style, began following her career. When I learned through Instagram that she had recently moved to New York, I endeavored to meet the artist in person. She suggested the Upper East Side, an area I know intimately through my day job. Where would we meet? Sant Ambroeus is a favorite, I had seen Dustin Hoffman there just a few weeks before, but finding a table can be impossible. Lauderee, of course. No one can resist the delicate curves of an impeccable macaron.
Settling into our seats in the cafe’s elegant dining area, Al Garf and I make our warm introductions before delving into her story. She has a soft, sweet manner of speaking, and her hands immediately begin to dance with her words. The artist originally hails from Egypt, where she was born. She moved to her father’s native Kuwait for her formative years, before returning to Egypt to attend The American University in Cairo. There, she trained as a fine artist. It was during those years that she “realized that studying art is very useless.” While she did gain a strong handle on technique, she notes that, “art is based on how you feel. When you study art, it’s a lot of following the curriculum. Every artist is very different; the way you paint, the way you feel, the way you express. When you’re studying art, you’re kind of all going in the same direction according to the curriculum which is set for you. It’s very book smarts. Art is not really book smarts.”
She pauses to contemplate what it takes to be an artist. “Heart smarts?” I eagerly interject. “Yes, exactly!” She exclaims in reply. “[Art education] is not tailored to every person. It’s just tailored to how the school wants you to learn, and it’s not very beneficial to every person. You just spend a lot of money, and you learn anatomy a little bit, you learn the very practical way of drawing the face, drawing a tree, drawing the basics. But when it comes to expressing how you want to paint and how you want to let everything out, it should be very different from one person to the next, and it really doesn’t matter.”
Last year, Al Garf marked a major milestone in her career, completing her first large scale mural in partnership with urban arts organization DUCO and faculty members from Helwan University. DUCO was curating a mural promoting green technology in the city, and consulted Al Garf. She found herself intrigued by the opportunity, and Managing Director Hassan Ismail’s intentions, remembering, “he used to live in the states, and he wanted to bring back graffiti in Cairo, but in a legal, more modern way. He doesn’t want tagging, he wants actual murals and big graffiti works. He contacted the company who wanted to do the mural, and then he contacted me.”
Her first experience worked like a dream. “It was a lot smoother than I thought. We did this gridding system, where you grid the whole mural, small squares everywhere, and then you divide your painting according the grid. It’s easier for you to know what goes where.”
She immediately fell in love with street art, thanks to “the accessibility of it, it’s not confined to a gallery. I love working outdoors as well. Working in a studio is just working by yourself 24/7, you don’t really talk to people, you don’t really interact, and then you take your painting and put it in a gallery, and you don’t even interact a lot with the gallery. So working outdoors, you get to interact with people in the neighborhood and people get to come and talk to you and ask you questions about the mural. It’s very interactive. And working on a very large scale gives you much more freedom.”
These interactions effected her deeply. “A lot of people,” came to talk to her, she recalls, “it was so much fun. Everyone kept coming and asking us what we were painting. A lot of people thought we were painting [Egyptian footballer Mohamed Salah] at first, and they were really excited that we were painting a famous figure. But then they were actually disappointed when they found out we weren’t painting him, but it was really fun interacting with people.”
Intoxicated by the experience, Al Garf decided to dedicate herself to pursuing street art. “I was very excited because I really want to specialize in being a muralist. I was a fine artist before. And then when I started murals, I really loved it so much I just put everything on hold and focused on murals, I really wanted to do something that big.” She relocated to New York City to follow this goal.
Here, she has found continued inspiration for her creative process, which focuses on capturing subjects’ innermost emotions. Her process focuses heavily on observation, and the city that never sleeps offers endless inspiration. “It’s very cliche, I know, but it’s very diverse here. It’s very different from Egypt. You don’t see people very often in the streets, there’s a lot of big roads, cars. You don’t really get to observe people, unless you’re sitting in a cafe or sitting in a very confined place. In Egypt, everyone is looking at everyone else. Here, everyone is minding their own business. It’s interesting to watch them minding their own business. That’s what I like more about this city.”
“I’m a very private and kind of secretive person. So I like to think that most people are like that.”
Time has made her cynical, though. “So far, I feel like people are just disappointing. There’s a lot of shallowness. I always thought that people are a lot deeper. People live a very Instagram-able life. I’ve actually noticed a lot of times that when you talk to someone, even close friends, people are always concerned about talking about themselves that they never really ask you how you are. I feel like this is a trend going on, people are so concerned about what’s new in their life and how they can present it in the best way possible.”
Her work reflects these changing perspectives. “People comment on it. People say that I started painting more bleakly. I like painting portraits in general, so they say ‘they’re not smiling, the colors have a brown wash to them. Everything is becoming darker.’ I don’t see it, but people say that it’s true, and tend to believe other people more than I believe myself. It’s unintentional, but I don’t mind. It’s boring to stick to one aesthetic for the rest of your life, so I don’t mind it.” Regardless, she allows her momentary opinions to inform her positively. “I’m realizing more and more that I’m painting for the ‘introverts’. I’m painting about inner thoughts and covert feelings. I’m painting for myself and people who feel the same way I do, that people are not necessarily selfish, but are disappointing more than anything really, that there’s a level of fakeness, and too much vanity or self-obsession to genuinely care about other people and get out of the ‘me’ state. To put it simply, I am just painting my inner thoughts and my self-awareness.”
This years, her aspirations continue to grow. “A very simple resolution is to actually do a mural in New York City. The thing is, when you’re moving to a new city, and a new country, you don’t know anybody. You don’t know how to go about it. Right now I’m applying to be an assistant to other muralists in New York City. This is how I’m going to start.” She has no shortage of inspiration, she cites Findac, Maya Hayuk, Swoon, Indie184, Addfuel, Pichiavo, and Hush as her favorite street artists of the moment.
We turn to the coffee and pastries our waitress has just set down on the table. There may be a long future full of realizations and contemplations to anticipate, but for now, we have the present, full of questions and delicious moments to enjoy.
