How 'Flight Into Egypt' Connects Black Artists with Ancient Egyptian Heritage

Flight Into Egypt's curator, Akili Tommasino, grew up in Brooklyn, New York. He remembers a bowling center two blocks away from his home that was embellished with murals of hieroglyphs, cartouches and Pharaonic depictions. "There are many artists who have not been to Egypt but for whom Egypt is so central," he tells OkayAfrica.

Tommasino began conceiving Flight Into Egypt after visiting the country in 2018, drawing inspiration from Henry Ossawa Tanner's century-old oil painting that depicts the Holy Family fleeing from King Herod's assassins. "This exhibition was born out of the dissonance between the Black communities I grew up in, which embraced ancient Egyptian imagery as a source of empowerment, and the institutional denial that Egypt is even necessarily in Africa, reflected in the layout of many Western institutions, including the Met," he explains.

Since the late 19th century, Black communities, especially in North America, have drawn inspiration from ancient Egypt to reclaim identities and reestablish a cultural connection with Africa.

The "Egyptology and the Color Line" gallery lays the groundwork for the exhibition's historical context. It traces white epistemological dominance in Egyptology and documents the fascination of Black scholars who were often denied access to excursions and research.

A standout display is aletter from Dows Dunham, head of the Department of Egyptian Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, to Harvard-trained Black scholar William Leo Hansberry. Written in 1932, Dunham deterred Hansberry from joining a British-led expedition to Kawa, Northern Sudan. He questioned Hansberry's usefulness and foresaw that his presence as a Black man would be "almost impossible" for Egyptians to understand and thus affect the prestige of the operation.

While Egyptians do not necessarily perceive themselves and each other through the Western lens of race, Egypt's wrestling with its own colonial history has strained relations with its Black population, its neighboring countries, and the Black diaspora.

Sara Elmessiry, an Egyptian poet and musician better known as Felukah, was born and raised in Cairo and now lives in New York. She found the exhibition through Erykah Badu's Instagram.

"I hadn't ever heard about this community of really cool Black artists claiming Egypt so strongly," she says. "Growing up, I heard so many different things about my race. I've always been acutely aware that I'm darker than the white-passing olive-toned Egyptians around me. [Flight Into Egypt] is the blend of cultures that has always spoken to me: ancient Egypt and Black art, more than traditional Arab culture."

To Elmessiry, the exhibition was a safe space to step into. "I really felt like there are people who see what I'm seeing, which is to be Pharaoh, to be Egyptian, to be African, is all the same," she says.

The "Awakening and Ascent" gallery delves into the Harlem Renaissance and Pan-African approaches to ancient Egypt. Ruth Rizkallah, a New York-born and raised Coptic Egyptian, is familiar with ancient Egypt's influence on Harlem and Brooklyn's arts and music scenes.

Elmessiry and Rizkallah were especially happy to enter the "Heritage Studies" gallery, which showcases modern Egyptian artists' engagement with ancient Egypt, from sculptures to pop culture.

"One of the considerations and motivations of the exhibit is the inclusion of work by Egyptian artists of the 20th and 21st century who, like many of the Black artists, engage particularly with Pharaonic imagery as a source of pre-colonial empowerment," says Tommasino. "Modern Egyptians have been omitted in so many musicological contexts, which probably exacerbates negative reactions from that part of the world to other engagements with ancient Egyptian materials and images."

Elmessiry particularly liked Maha Maamoun's "Domestic Tourism II," a collage of Egyptian film scenes shot by the Pyramids. Rizkallah was pleasantly surprised to see the work of Coptic artistArmia Malak Khalil, a community widely erased in mainstream depictions of Egypt. He specifically carved his wooden sculpture "Hope - I Am a Morning Scarab" for this exhibition.

"It bothered me that Coptic indigeneity was not included more, but that's a general problem in academia," she says. "You cannot study ancient Egypt without studying Coptic history." While she believes that Egyptians have to do the work of reclaiming their narratives, she acknowledges that this is neither Tommasino's responsibility nor his framework.

On the other hand, Rizkallah would have hoped to see Nubian art and a deeper dive into Egypt's connection with Sudan and Ethiopia. "I would have liked the exhibition to grapple more with how the politics of race changed in Egypt," she says. "It's not enough just to put in contemporary Egyptian artists. In the mid-1900s, Egypt was thisrefuge for many Black artists. And then we see a shift now: It's not a refuge anymore; Egyptians are racist and anti-Black."

"My hope is that [Flight Into Egypt] prompts discussions, but I certainly do not purport to present a comprehensive or exhaustive picture, particularly of the contemporary moment," says Tommasino, who consciously decided not to platform negativity. "My emphasis was on shoring up aspects of history that have been overlooked."

There is only so much that can be discussed in one exhibition, and both Rizkallah and Elmessiry consider Flight Into Egypt a beautiful first step towards a different understanding of ancient Egypt's afterlives in modern times.

I am not convinced that anyone should be allowed to claim a culture that, despite being ancient, continues to be lived by certain people today. However, I believe that we should all be allowed and encouraged to draw inspiration from culture, especially when it is at risk of being forgotten.

"If I may say this hot take: the Black artists and activists that claimed it in the exhibition have a deeper understanding and appreciation for ancient Egyptian civilization and culture than modern day Egyptians do," says Elmessiry. "This ancient culture has room and space for so many more connections than meets the eye. There should be more camaraderie, solidarity, and connection between our communities."