Wael Shawky's Revisionist Histories

Abstract This article positions Wael Shawky’s Drama 1882, which premiered at the 2024 Venice Biennale, as a profound, albeit subtle, critique of colonial historiography, foregrounding the constructed nature of historical narratives and the erasure of Indigenous agency within imperial accounts. By revisiting the Egyptian army colonel Ahmed Urabi’s nationalist uprising and its subsequent suppression by British forces, Shawky interrogates the subjectivity inherent in historical records, particularly those shaped by colonial power structures. Referencing Husayn al-Marsafi’s seminal 1881 treatise, which critiques the colonial use and misappropriation of key terminologies—such as nation, liberty, and governance—this article examines the premise in Shawky’s work of reclaiming an authentic, localized discourse for articulating resistance. Drama 1882 emerges as a revisionist intervention, probing historical ambiguities such as the contested causes of the 1882 Alexandria riots and their instrumental role in enabling the British bombardment of Alexandria and subsequent British imperial consolidation. This article examines Shawky’s Drama 1882 within his broader practice, situating Shawky’s work and choices of form and medium in the broader conversation of musical and cinematic history. It explores Shawky’s artistic methodology, with its marked and deliberate eschewal of overt emotionalism and conventional dramatization, which thus embodies an alternative epistemological approach to historiography. Through meditative visual and performative strategies, this article argues that Shawky reframes historical events as sites of contested meaning, emphasizing the multiplicity of perspectives and the political stakes of interpretation.