A tree but not only one life, but many lives. It begins as a tree and later it becomes the wood which is used in industry, in furniture, or it may have another life as charcoal, which becomes fire, a symbol of warmth, cooking and the home. Human beings, by contrast, have only one short life. I use the idea of "burning" in this project to do three things: first, I made a monoprint and drawing on hundreds of small pieces of paper in an assemblage, which resembled a burned tree. Then I used charcoal and glued them together in a various sculptural forms and wrote the alphabets of ancient languages on them; Arammaic, Arabic and Syriac. Finally, I sliced wood, stacked the pieces in the shape of trees of various sizes and then burned them. Then, I made a sculpture from the remains. They resembled palm trees when you see them burned on the road. Trees are the history around us, but we don’t see them (they have a history which we don’t see).
Mohamed el-Ganoby is an internationally recognized artist and craftsman whose candles and home accessories can be found in homes from Cairo to Copenhagen. Born in 1965 in the Egyptian city of Komombo, el-Ganoby grew up surrounded both by the remnants of Egypt's ancient Pharonic heritage and the rich local histories and traditions which the southern part of Egypt is known for. The artist's southern Egyptian roots and years teaching and working in rural environments are evident in his work.