Cairo’s Nadah El Shazly has shared a stunning animated video for “Mahmiya” – the closing track from her debut full-length Ahwar (Nawa Recordings). The video was created by Marwan Elgamal, the Egyptian artist behind the album’s artwork.
“The idea for the animation came after internalising the soundscape and words of Nadah El Shazly’s ‘Mahmiya’” says Elgamal. “It had a sensibility that seemed soothing and warm – vital and at peace, yet vast and unconcerned, like a sea, long since dried and fossilised, wherein the listener is placed without bearings. This brought about a story, a character and landscape where time and location are not classified.
In this place there is a condition of symmetry between the inner world of the girl and the outer landscape. She morphs and changes through her surroundings, and through these interactions the world is animated and energised. The land evolves and vegetates and soars and crumbles. Things occur as they will, and force is not exerted, but rather the events unfold without effort.
Time becomes represented as fluctuating and dilating, and our girl breathes, plays, creates, grows, and becomes conclusively unrecognisable, then to be brought back to the beginning of a cycle.
There seems to be an indefiniteness to the events, and change is constant, and she plays her part with no concern to consequence. The girl may be an extension of the land, a force of creation, a mechanical machine, or a little girl vulnerable to this ambiguous place full of unfamiliar entities. Through this ambiguity I hope to provide a visual counterpart to Nadah El Shazly’s touching song.”
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