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Gamal Fahmy Resists Pandemic Gloominess With Vibrant Colors

Gamal Fahmy Resists Pandemic Gloominess With Vibrant Colors
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Gamal Fahmy Resists Pandemic Gloominess With Vibrant Colors

Gamal Fahmy Resists Pandemic Gloominess With Vibrant Colors

Gamal Fahmy spent the entire period defined by the coronavirus pandemic contemplating its psychological impact on the world.

This contemplation was manifested in colorful abstract splashes of emotion on canvases, which are now on display at the White Frame Exhibition in Cairo’s Picasso Gallery.

The plethora of emotions brought about by the pandemic can be seen in the hundreds of details that make up Fahmy’s paintings.

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat about his work and whether it was affected by the virus, Fahmy says: “I wasn't influenced by the pandemic, but rather, I painted with a desire to overcome its circumstances."

He noted that he chose white frames as a common base for his various paintings that held vibrant and bold colors that reflect a sense of resistance to the depression imposed on humanity by the pandemic.

Fahmy explains that life is full of hardship and disasters, but "we could live through them and experience the contradiction between beauty and ugliness, tyranny and justice, forced on us".

His works feature a number of contradictions in life, such as good and evil, ugliness and beauty, joy and sadness, and hope and despair.

Forty-three paintings are on display at Gamal Fahmy’s new exhibition, which runs until January 16.

Visitors will find that his work captures the significance and meaning of his discussion about the power of life’s contradictions while also giving it an optimistic edge with its interplay between colors.

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The Surprising Reason Why There Are No Human Remains in the Titanic

The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
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The Surprising Reason Why There Are No Human Remains in the Titanic

The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)
The RMS Titanic sank at 2:20 am Monday morning on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic. (Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

The Titanic, a symbol of hubris and human tragedy, has been a source of fascination for more than 112 years.

But the fact is, the sunken ocean liner was more than just movie fodder or a deep-sea explorer’s holy grail, it was a very real ship on which more than 1,500 people died.

And yet, whilst experts, using the most sophisticated submersible and underwater filming equipment, have found some extraordinary relics from the wreckage, they have never found any skeletons or bones.

“I’ve seen zero human remains,” James Cameron, director of the iconic 1997 film, told the New York Times back in 2012.

“We’ve seen clothing. We’ve seen pairs of shoes, which would strongly suggest there was a body there at one point. But we’ve never seen any human remains.”

Given that Cameron has visited and explored the wreck some 33 times (and claims to have spent more time on the ship than the ship’s captain), if he hasn’t seen any human remains we can assume that there really aren’t any there. So why is this?

It’s a question that has recently been perplexing Reddit users but, luckily, it has some relatively simple answers.

Whilst there was a notoriously insufficient number of lifeboats on the ship, many passengers and crew members still managed to put on life jackets. This means that they remained buoyant even after they succumbed to the freezing cold waters of the Atlantic.

And so, when a storm followed the sinking of the “unsinkable” ship, they were likely swept away from the site of the wreckage and carried further away over subsequent weeks and years by ocean currents.

“The issue you have to deal with is, at depths below about 3,000 feet (around 914 meters), you pass below what's called the calcium carbonate compensation depth,” deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard explained to NPR back in 2009.

“And the water in the deep sea is under saturated in calcium carbonate, which is mostly, you know, what bones are made of. For example, on the Titanic and on the Bismarck, those ships are below the calcium carbonate compensation depth, so once the critters eat their flesh and expose the bones, the bones dissolve,” he said.

Nevertheless, some people believe that there may still be some preserved bodies in sealed off parts of the ship, such as the engine room.

This is because fresh oxygen-rich water that scavengers rely on may not have been able to enter these areas.

Nevertheless, more than a century since the tragedy, it seems likely that such searches for remains would be fruitless.