At the Giza Plateau, where mystery settles into stone and sand, Turkish artist Mert Ege Köse has inserted something that shouldn’t exist—yet somehow entirely belongs. The Shen, a monumental aluminum ring now gleaming across the desert, speaks directly to the Pyramids across 4,500 years of silence. It doesn’t compete with them. It frames them. It listens to them. In doing so, it reveals something profound about how contemporary art can honor the past without being imprisoned by it.
The title carries ancient weight. In pharaonic Egypt, the Shen symbol was a looped rope representing eternity and protection—a circle without beginning or end that appeared in royal cartouches and sacred texts. Köse has lifted that symbol directly from hieroglyphic language and reimagined it as a giant camera lens. Spanning six meters wide and five meters high, the aluminum ring invites viewers inside to frame the Pyramids, curated and intentional. Stand within it and the Pyramids fall into view perfectly. Step aside and the light shifts across its mirrored surface, pulling the desert and sky into constant reflection. The sculpture refuses stillness; it changes with every footstep, every hour, every season.
This sensitivity to light and perception defines Köse’s broader practice. He works with malleable aluminum—material that feels distinctly contemporary yet carries an endurance that rivals the artifacts housed in Cairo’s museums. His approach isn’t about imposing meaning onto history. It’s about creating presence, a space where historical symbols can breathe again without reduction to cliché.
Since 2021, Art D’Égypte’s Forever Is Now has transformed the Giza Plateau into an open-air stage where artists from around the world create in direct conversation with a place that has shaped human imagination for millennia. The goal isn’t spectacle. It’s a careful choreography: showing that new artistic languages can coexist with ancient ones, that innovation and reverence need not be opposites. Köse embodies this balance. A simple, bold form highlights rather than distracts from the Pyramids—a gesture of humility before monumentality.
The Shen’s power lies partly in its clarity. No complexity obscures it. A viewer grasps the idea instantly and forms personal connection. It photographs beautifully—a physical and digital portal drawing people whether they stand in the desert or scroll through a camera roll thousands of miles away. For Köse, already an emerging significant voice in Turkish contemporary art, this installation marks a defining moment. To create work in authentic dialogue with the Pyramids, not in their shadow but beside them, is a rare feat. The Shen feels both futuristic and deeply rooted—a circle that bridges not just distance, but time itself.
Art D’Égypte’s Forever Is Now 05 is on display at Giza from November 11 to December 6, 2025.
Photos | AWC Contemporary
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