 Al Aqsa Park, 2006 In his computer animation Al Aqsa Park, Wael Shawky shows the Dome of the Rock on Jerusalem's Temple Mount as a merry-go-round that has come off the rails and with its lights flashing is rotating around its own axis. Jews and Muslims claim this holy place equally, as it is a site where the histories of the three Abrahamic religions intersect. By staging one of the central symbols of Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an axis of a regulated entertainment industry, the artist investigates the complex interaction of politics and religion, fundamentalism and capitalism, religious ritual and medial distribution – and at the same time creates his own blasphemous version of Mohammed's ascent.  The Cave, 2005 The video shows the artist walking through the aisles of a Hamburg supermarket while reciting the 18th sura of the Koran in Arabic. Following the visual aesthetics of a news broadcast, Shawky is declaiming in an uninterrupted flow of words the legend of the Martyrs of Ephesus, who were persecuted for their beliefs and found refuge in a cave. After 309 years sound asleep, they finally awoke in a changed world now dominated by Christianity – a legend anchored in both the Muslim and the Christian faiths. In this hybrid self-portrait, the artist questions the relationship between religion and capitalism, as well as the dialectics of knowledge and power. From the neutral position of a news anchor, he counters the dominance of capitalist media with the religious language. Wael Shawky, * 1971 in Alexandria (ET), lives and works in Alexandria (ET)  Wael Shawky, Al Aqsa Park, 2006computer animation (b/w, sound) 30 min., loop courtesy Wael Shawky Wael Shawky, The Cave, 2005 video (colour, sound) 12:45 min., loop courtesy Wael Shawky
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