Title: The Bee Kingdom

Date: 2021

Medium: Prints from The Bee Kingdom archive

Artist: Joy Amina Garnett

Exhibition: Blue Sky Gardening, 2021

From press release:

The Bee Kingdom shares some of Garnett’s research about her maternal grandfather, Egyptian Modernist poet Ahmed Zaky Abushady (1892–1955). Some of these materials draw directly from the family archive, while other materials reflect research conducted in libraries and archives around the world.

Dr. Ahmed Zaky Abushady (1892–1955) was an influential Egyptian Modernist and Romantic poet. He is remembered in Egypt for founding and editing the important literary and cultural journal Apollo (1932–34), which provided one of the few platforms for experimental poetry in Egypt and across the Arab world.

In addition to writing and publishing poetry, Abushady was a bee scientist, inventor, physician, and bacteriologist. He trained in medicine at the University of London and began his bee research after graduating. He moved to a farm in Benson, Oxfordshire where he established a research station and launched his first bee science journal. The King’s Patent Agency awarded Abushady his first patent in 1919 for his design of a removable aluminum honeycomb, which became four patents for beehive improvements in total. Abushady’s innovative work in bee science and its relationship to his Modernist poetry and philosophy remains under-researched.

After returning to Cairo, he founded The Bee Kingdom, a bilingual Arabic and English journal, along with its society of beekeepers and scientists The Bee Kingdom League. After organizing an international bee exposition in Cairo in 1931, Abushady was retained by King Farouk to administer and direct the Royal Apiaries.

Abushady’s idealistic vision for a contemporary Egypt found expression in both bee husbandry and poetry. He believed that the bee held secrets to harmony in nature and culture, and that poetry could bridge gulfs between languages, cultures, and nations.

“I learned that to become a beekeeper is to give yourself, unconditionally, to the cause. I learned that beekeepers must wage an endless war against predators, parasites, and disease. Beekeeping is manual work. Bee husbandry borders spiritual. Beekeeping is unceasing ecological activism. But beekeeping is also poetry. Beekeeping is flowering plants and unkempt fields and botany. To keep bees is to embrace the unending cycle of life and birth and death. It is to accept the unknown. To keep bees is to fly in the face of near-certain destruction. My grandfather knew this.”

Additional information:

I've also lifted this more specific description of the collages from my short essay on Arab Urbanism Magazine:

https://www.araburbanism.com/visual-works/beekeepers-library

The collages that comprise “The Beekeepers’ Library” reflect Abushâdy’s bee culture through visual materials and texts: They incorporate photographs of his apiary in Khorshed, a village in the Nile Delta, and images of his patented honeycombs. They introduce him and his English wife, my grandmother-to-be, Annie (née Bamford), through their portraits. The collages insert elements of illustration, advertisements, and graphic design from Abushâdy’s bee journals [...]

Website:

https://joygarnett.net

Instagram:

@joygarnett