Why, in Egypt, creatives are returning to calligraphy in their droves

It’s sovereignty, not identity

On the surface, the event and the workshops might seem to centre solely on education and creative exchange. And while this is true, beneath the surface something more intricate is taking shape. An examination of the dynamics at play – who shows up, who organises, who instructs, and what references are used in these workshops – reveals that this is not merely a cultural or professional dialogue. In the quiet rituals of making, listening, gathering, and observing, a culturally grounded mode of discernment is evolving.

Mainstream discourse on Arabic calligraphy and contemporary design have a reductive tendency that frames these pursuits solely through the lens of identity. This tendency too easily substitutes critical inquiry with familiar rhetoric and overlooks the deeper motive at play: the need for sovereignty – sovereignty over form, over narrative, and over the future of how we design, write, and imagine the world.

At its core, these activities are all decolonial acts – not through academic jargon, but through the slow, deliberate unlearning of inherited modes of seeing, selecting, and making while cultivating new ones. Ironically, it is a form of creative destruction – not of industries, but of Western-dominant ways of knowing and making meaning.

* Special thank you to Mrs May Mohamed Said Ibrahim.