“Forever Is Now”: Egypt’s first contemporary art exhibition at Giza Pyramids in 4500 Years

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JR_GREETINGS FROM GIZA_©Pixcelle Photography

Art D’Égypte inaugurated their 4th annual exhibition, Forever Is Now, which takes place until November 7^th, 2021 at the Great Pyramids of Giza and the surrounding Giza Plateau.

In a departure from its previous exhibitions, Art D’Égypte has invited international and local artists to participate.

This exhibition, the first one of its kind in 4500 years, represents a merging of ancient heritage and contemporary art at the oldest and last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which today survives as a UNESCO world heritage site.

French artist JR was invited by Art D'Egypte to participate to Forever is Now. He decided to intervene at the Pyramid of Khafre and created the trompe-l'oeil Greetings from Giza (cover).

The impressive artwork Greetings from Giza is made of a steel structure and mesh and it stands in front of the Pyramid of Khafre in Giza. This famous pyramid, constructed 4,591 years ago in 2570 BC, serves as the tomb of the Fourth-Dynasty pharaoh Khafre.

At the same time and for the first time, JR releases an NFT collection. Greetings from Giza is a multi-layered collection that blurs the lines between the public and digital spaces, inviting the audience to not only own a piece of the actual image that creates the artwork, but also become part of the artwork. The piece has been divided into 4,591 Greetings from Giza NFTs, which echoes the age of the pyramid.

For the very first time, people are able to own a piece of the public installation. With Greetings from Giza, JR plays on the balance between the macroscopic and the microscopic, the individual experience with the universal.

The mesmerizing installation shows a never-before-seen perspective of the pyramid and is made using countless dots and shapes of varying sizes. Using a combination of a specialised algorithm and artistic interpretation, HENI and JR carefully divided the artwork into 4,591 pieces of varying sizes, and in doing so created unique artworks in the form of NFTs.

Like pieces of a monumental puzzle, one of the rarities for the NFTs will be the section of the installation where the detailed NFT can be found.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Greetings from Giza artwork, is the rich history of the subject matter. Paying homage to the cultural impact of Ancient Egypt, which spanned over 3,000 years, JR wanted to include one of the most recognisable characteristics of this historic civilisation: hieroglyphs.
For the Greetings from Giza NFTs, he created 26 hieroglyph categories, for a total of 738 hieroglyph rarities with an additional 5 special symbols that JR created. Each hieroglyph is unique, and only appears once throughout the whole collection.

EXPLORE GREETINGS FROM GIZA

The other participating international artists are Russian artist Alexander Ponomarev; American artist Gisela Colón; Brazilian artist João Trevisan; Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn; Egyptian artist Moataz Nasr; Egyptian born, Los Angeles- based artist Sherin Guirguis; British artists Shuster + Moseley; British artist Stephen Cox RA; and Saudi Arabian artist HRH Prince Sultan Bin Fahad.

story image LORENZO QUINN_TOGETHER_©Pixcelle Photography