Latest news with #XeniaNikolskaya
CairoScene
18-06-2025
- Business
- CairoScene
Esna Revived: Egypt Returns to Aga Khan Award Shortlist After Decades
Esna Revived: Egypt Returns to Aga Khan Award Shortlist After Decades The Revitalization of Esna by Takween has been rapped by the Aga Khan Awards due to its thoughtful bottom-up approach. In 2009, Takween - an Egyptian urban development company - began its venture in the ancient and then-forgotten Upper Egyptian city of Esna with a question: 'Can the future of medium-sized, underprivileged cities in Egypt be reimagined?' This inquiry led to a 15-year partnership with the city's people, working together to preserve and revitalise its built heritage. This year, these efforts have garnered international recognition, placing an Egyptian project on the Aga Khan Award for Architecture's (AKAA) shortlist for the first time in decades. Located 60 kilometres south of Luxor, Esna has long been overlooked by Egypt's cultural tourism map. The city's rich offering of Greco-Roman, Coptic, Islamic, and modern heritage was reduced to a single attraction: the Temple of Khnum. Everything beyond it - its caravanserais, local markets, Ottoman-era houses, and community stories - faced neglect, with some areas even slated for demolition. Aerial view of Esna with the Temple of Khnum at the centre © Takween ICD / Ahmed Mostafa What followed was not a top-down restoration project, but a community-driven transformation model. Takween conserved 20 heritage buildings, activated thousands of job opportunities, upgraded 17 community-managed services, and helped rebrand the city with a new visual identity all while centering local participation, especially women's involvement in tourism activities. The AKAA 2025 shortlist places among the architectural giants of our time. It's a meaningful return for Egypt, which last appeared on the AKAA shortlist in 2004 with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Prior to that, Egypt had won the award seven times, including for the Nubian Museum in 2001. But what makes Esna's recognition all the more powerful is its bottom-up approach. Unlike iconic state-led structures, this project thrived through grassroots involvement, strategic partnerships, and support from institutions such as the US government, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and AECID (Spanish Cooperation). It is a compelling example of how heritage, when nurtured with care and vision, can become an engine for society to bloom. Revitalisation of Historic Esna. ©Takween ICD / Xenia Nikolskaya with Courtesy of Aga Khan Trust for Culture One of the most iconic sites of this initiative is Wakalat al-Geddawi, an 18th-century caravanserai that once pulsed with regional trade but had fallen into ruin. Between 2018 and 2021, Takween led a meticulous conservation and adaptive reuse project that reintroduced the structure as a cultural anchor for both residents and visitors. The building's mudbrick and wood architecture, with its decorative panels and inner courtyard, now stands restored as a record of local craftsmanship. The initiative also included upgrades to the historic Qisariyya Market and Bazaar Street, the restoration of the 19th-century Royal Guesthouse, and the rehabilitation of 15 other architecturally significant sites, collectively weaving Esna's built heritage back into daily civic life. As Takween celebrates this milestone, they continue to invite others into the journey: architects, city planners, policymakers, and citizens alike. As Takween said in their announcement celebrating the shortlisting—"Esna is not an isolated success. It's a prototype for what is possible when architecture serves people, stories, and place.'
The National
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
The Egyptian Coptic kitsch that inspired a work of photographic devotion
When Xenia Nikolskaya first went to Egypt in 2006, she thought she knew what she was looking for. Born and raised in the Soviet Union, where religion had been systematically suppressed, Nikolskaya was fascinated by Christianity, particularly its Eastern traditions. The granddaughter of an Orthodox priest who was imprisoned under Stalin, she saw her trip to Egypt as an opportunity to explore the Coptic Church and its rich history. But as life often does, her plans took an unexpected turn. Enthused by Egypt's colonial-era history, she instead spent a decade working on a photography project, Dust, which documented abandoned buildings in Egypt from that period. 'Dust distracted me,' Nikolskaya says with a laugh. Yet even as her focus shifted, she found herself quietly collecting religious souvenirs – plastic icons, rosaries, pillows and tapestries adorned with Jesus, the Virgin Mary or one of the saints. These humble, mass-produced objects were everywhere: in churches, monasteries and convents. 'They were being sold at every church I visited and for me, they were absolutely remarkable,' she says. 'So simple, so cheap, but so full of meaning.' Now, almost 20 years later, those objects take centre stage in her new book, Plastic Jesus. Part photography collection, part personal exploration, the book elevates these everyday items into symbols of faith, resilience and accessibility. 'It's a love letter,' Nikolskaya says. 'Not a critique, but a celebration of how faith can be deeply personal and democratic.' Nikolskaya's relationship with religion has always been complicated. Growing up in the Soviet Union where most worship happened under the radar of a strongly atheist establishment, she was taught to view faith with scepticism. During her childhood, churches were turned into swimming pools, and religious holidays were overshadowed by state-sponsored distractions, she recounts. 'On the night of Easter, they'd show movies like The Godfather or one of Bob Fosse's jazz films. These movies that were semi-forbidden because of their racy content were meant to keep people from going to church on religious holidays,' she tells The National. Yet, beneath this enforced atheism, religion lingered, a ghostly presence in her family history. Her grandfather, Georgiy Mikhailovich Nikolskiy, was an Orthodox priest who spent nearly 20 years in the Siberian gulag. 'Learning about his life after the fall of the Soviet Union was a revelation,' she says. 'It brought me closer to him, but also to the idea of faith itself.' This longing to understand her grandfather's world led her to study iconography and religious art as a young artist in St Petersburg. But it wasn't until she moved to Egypt that she found a way to connect her personal history with her creative practice. 'The Coptic Church fascinated me,' she says. 'It's ancient, resilient and deeply tied to the history of Christianity.' At first glance, the objects featured in Plastic Jesus might seem kitschy – a low rent tapestry of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, an image of the Coptic patriarch washing Jesus's feet in a tub embossed on a rubber keychain, and felt pillows with paintings of the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. But through Nikolskaya's lens, they become something more. Photographed against plain backgrounds and cataloged with meticulous care, they resemble museum artefacts, elevated from the mundane to the extraordinary. 'We presented the items against plain backdrops and included their size dimensions below each photo. I wanted to create a museum of this contemporary religious experience. I wanted to elevate the items and make them look important,' she explains. The book's title, Plastic Jesus, captures this tension between the sacred and the synthetic. Inspired by a rendition by Paul Newman of the 1962 song Plastic Jesus, which he sang in the film Cool Hand Luke, the song's lyrics recount a satirical yet poignant reflection on faith and materialism. With lyrics like 'Going ninety I ain't scary, cause I've got the Virgin Mary, assuring me that I won't go to hell,' the song highlights the deep bonds that people form with religious icons that they can take with them anywhere they go. Similarly, Nikolskaya's work embraces this duality, celebrating the accessibility and deeply personal nature of faith through objects often dismissed as trivial or kitschy. It's a nod to the accessibility of these objects, but also a reflection on how religion adapts to modernity. 'Faith doesn't need to be grand or gilded to be meaningful,' she says. 'It can be messy, imperfect, funny even. But that doesn't make it any less powerful.' To bring Plastic Jesus to life, Nikolskaya collaborated with graphic designer Omar El Zoghbi, a colleague from the German University in Cairo where she is a professor of photography. This approach is also a quiet critique of traditional institutions, such as churches and museums, which often dictate what is considered valuable or beautiful. 'Religious institutions and museums both have this authority,' she says. 'They decide what matters, what's worth preserving. But perhaps there is a world where these objects can matter too. Because they tell a story. They carry faith.' The book is also a reflection on materiality and spirituality. 'In a world focused on material things, some objects go beyond their physical form,' she says. 'They become symbols of something deeper.' While Plastic Jesus focuses on Egypt's Coptic community, Nikolskaya sees parallels with other traditions, from Latin America to Russia. One photograph in the book, taken in a monastery in Luxor, shows ancient Egyptian reliefs repurposed as the foundation for Christian symbols. 'It's fascinating to see how everything is recycled, intertwined,' she says. 'Faith is always adapting, always finding new forms. "Under all the dust and sand that many people associate with the pharaohs, Egypt is as colorful as India or Mexico, but people always look at Cairo and other Egyptian cities through the dust filter. With this book, we were trying to bring that colour out. Egyptian ancient history is fascinating, but it's also overtold and very popular. And there are so many things which are hidden or unknown that deserve attention," she muses. This sense of continuity is central to the book. As Adam Makari writes in the book's preface, Plastic Jesus is 'an ode to the fantastic; to the people of Egypt. Dedicated to the flamboyant glories and reminders of our everyday miracles; made by them for them and for us to truly believe what we believe.' For Nikolskaya, Plastic Jesus is not just a celebration of faith – it's a deeply personal project. 'It's my spiritual journey,' she says. 'I'm not religious in the traditional sense, but these objects resonate with me. They remind me of my grandfather, of his faith, of everything he endured.' The book is also a tribute to the resilience and creativity of the Coptic community. 'These objects may seem funny or cheap, but they serve a much more vital purpose. They remind us of what it means to believe.' As Nikolskaya's photographs show, faith doesn't have to be perfect to be powerful. Sometimes, it's as simple as a plastic Jesus in your pocket – a small, everyday miracle.
