Wael Shawky: Cabaret Crusades Drawings

Cabaret Crusades Drawings is an extraordinary limited-edition pop-up book by Egyptian artist Wael Shawky (born 1971).

The pop-ups are based on seven drawings by Shawky that in turn are inspired by the Arabian calligraphers, colorists and storytellers working just before the First Crusade. Thus, a two-headed animal bears castles upon its back
a gigantic camel straddles mountains. Meticulously precise yet dreamlike, Shawky's drawings swarm with waxen incident and narrative detail, displaying worlds equally alien and familiar, diffuse and present. A virtuoso work of book art, and an exquisitely conceived sculptural extension of drawing, Cabaret Crusades Drawings includes essays by Thomas D. Trummer and Omar Berrada explore the historical foundations and current relevance of Shawky's drawings and the particular role of draftsmanship within Shawky's body of work as a whole.