Wael Shawky, al-Qurban, Serpentine Gallery

The contemporary art of the Middle East is finding its place in global renown. There’s a whole new infrastructure of galleries and biennales in the Gulf, most notably in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah, and a host of new galleries in the West that showcase work from the region. 

Exciting times, then, and a good moment for the Serpentine Gallery to showcase Wael Shawky, Egypt’s best-known contemporary artist and a rising world star. Called al-Qurban (which means ‘sacrifice’), Shawky’s is a ground-breaking show for London’s most glamorous gallery – and by the way, the show makes for a great chance to see both the gallery and its lustrous new twin, the Zaha Hadid-designed Serpentine Sackler gallery, five minutes away. 

Shawky has become something of a big noise, making film, video and performance that in a roundabout way addresses Middle Eastern culture. For example, at the Serpentine you’ll see Shawky’s new film Al Araba Al Madfuna II, made this year, which interprets the stories of Egyptian novelist Mohamed Mustagab, as well as his Cabaret Crusades series - The Horror Show File (2010) and The Path to Cairo (2012). In these celebrated films Shawky uses puppets - some 200-year-old Italian marionettes, others new and made by himself – to act out episodes of the Crusades, narrated in classical Arabic and inspired by writer Amin Maalouf’s 1986 book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes. Clearly showing their strings and dressed in Crusader and Saracen outfits, the marionettes invite a reading of being… puppets on a string. 

But Shawky’s work veers clear of being agit-prop. Rather, he makes full use of the uncanny, weird and surreal, as can also be seen in the show's drawings and exhibits, including the ceramic marionettes that he used in the films. Appropriately, Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Come and See exhibit runs concurrently at the new Serpentine Sackler Gallery: the two brothers have infamously used models and marionettes in similar absurdist vein. 

As well as being an artist, Wael Shawky also runs MASS Alexandria, an art school in Egypt’s coastal second city and his birthplace. The ancient city has as well as Cairo has been a centre of the Arab Spring and its tumultuous subsequent events. It's a vantage point that has given Shawky a long view.  

Admission: FREE
Address and map: Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA
Nearest tube: Lancaster Gate