Wael Shawky

Throughout his practice Wael Shawky re-visits history across a range of media and storytelling techniques. His 2010 video Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File reconstructs events that took place 1095–1099, in the first of a series of religious wars known as the Crusades. These military campaigns were initiated and supported by Roman Catholic Church leaders against the Islamic rulers and inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Shawky based his script on the writing of Arab historians Usama Ibn Munqidh, Ibn al-Qalanisi and Ibn al-Athīr, and took inspiration from Amin Maalouf’s 1986 book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, which gives Arab historians’ accounts of the causes underpinning the Crusades. These stretch back to the devastation caused by a plague that struck the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century.

Shawky reframes the history of the Crusades through perspectives that were not considered in dominant European historiography, shedding light on the way those events and their written histories continue to shape the present.

The artist carefully built the stage sets by hand. They include intricately embroidered costumes and miniature palaces, reflecting the period of the events. Shawky used 200-year-old marionettes in place of actors to portray the characters. These are voiced in classical Arabic. The traditional Italian marionettes were borrowed from the Lupi family collection, Turin. Their strings are intentionally visible throughout the video. This highlights the marionettes’ skilled manipulation and connects with questions of power and agency in the work.