Nader Sadek’s 2011 sculpture-and-performance piece “Baptism in Black” staged a Satanic ritual that desecrated the artist’s uniquely fabricated bust of Hosni Mubarak. Performed in the politically charged White Tower in Thessaloniki, Greece, at the end of September, Sadek’s piece channeled and connected the unrest fueling both Arab revolutions and Eurozone crises. Accompanied by Thessaloniki death metal outfit Genna Apo Kolo (Anal Birth) and a chorus of 30 local metal fans, Sadek carried out a black mass over a monochromatic white bust of Mubarak fabricated out of one of the artist’s signature, petroleum-based compounds. The ritual crescendoed with the artist drowning the bust in another one of these signature compounds — this time a shiny, onyx-colored, viscous liquid.
“Baptism in Black” links the Egyptian government’s persecution of heavy metal music and culture to the 2011 uprising that overthrew Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship. The Satanic allusions recall the 1996 mass arrest of heavy metal music fans in Egypt, which the state justified on the grounds that heavy metal fans are Satan worshippers. From amongst the arrested and tortured fans arose two activists who had a prominent role in the build up to and unfolding of the Egyptian revolution of February 2011, intensifying the activities of human rights and civil society organizations both on the ground and in social media. Playing on the paranoid fantasies of the Egyptian government, Sadek's piece in turn imagines that Satanic curses led to the eventual downfall of the Egyptian president. “Baptism in Black” initiates the former dictator into spiritual banishment.
The final products of this performance-event consisted of the "drowned Mubarak bust" and an experimental audio collage capturing Thessaloniki metal fans growling in the streets, aurally signaling their occupation of public space.
Nader Sadek is a Cairo-born multimedia artist based in New York who explores the intersectino of heavy metal culture with political discourse. “Baptism in Black” was performed in Thessaloniki, Greece on September 30, 2011, and was commissioned and funded by the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art and its workshop. Most recently, Sadek conceived the experimental heavy metal album “In the Flesh,” which was recently showcased at Santos Party House in New York.
Jason Frydman is assistant professor of English at Brooklyn College.