Wael Shawky at Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

5 June 2025

From 28 June – 28 September 2025, Talbot Rice Gallery presents a solo exhibition of works by Wael Shawky. Shawky’s penetrating historical analysis will be explored through dramatic retellings of the past, including Drama 1882, which was created for the Egyptian Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. This operatic film tells the story of the nationalist Urabi revolution, a dramatic café-fight in Alexandria in the summer of 1882, and the resulting conflict that led to Britain’s occupation of Egypt until 1956, protecting its investment in the Suez Canal.

Shawky’s piercing film, produced in an historic theatre in Alexandria with a vibrant set design and stunning libretto and score, will premiere in the UK at a time of widening historical reckoning for former colonial empires. The live performances in Drama 1882 carry forward the stilted movements of the marionettes in his celebrated trilogy, Cabaret Crusades, which recount the history of the Crusades from an Arab perspective. Wael Shawky has created a wholly unique visual language around his practice, and an incisive commentary on political histories that create cavernous holes in the authority of the past.

Weaving together a number of Shawky’s large-scale film productions, sculptures (many of which have featured in his films) and drawings, the exhibition will celebrate an extraordinary artist, and through extended academic research, honour the Byzantine and Islamic Art Historian who gave the gallery its name 50 years ago – David Talbot Rice.

Find out more via Talbot Rice Gallery.

Image: Wael Shawky, Drama 1882, 2024, 4k video, sound, color, VFX, Arabic, © Wael Shawky, Courtesy of Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Lisson Gallery, Lia Rumma, and Barakat Contemporary.