After forming the statue’s clay body, he put an electric lamp in his head and a shoe in his mouth, stabbed a knife in his neck and tied him by a metal chain. “The lamp means that he is a thinker, the shoe in his mouth means he cannot object to anything, the knife symbolizes his psychological death and the chains are those of injustice and despotism,” says Nasser Sherbini of his creation.

After forming the statue’s clay body, he put an electric lamp in his head and a shoe in his mouth, stabbed a knife in his neck and tied him by a metal chain. “The lamp means that he is a thinker, the shoe in his mouth means he cannot object to anything, the knife symbolizes his psychological death and the chains are those of injustice and despotism,” says Nasser Sherbini of his creation.

Sherbini is not a sculptor, but an owner of a shoe shop in the Ibrahimiya District in Alexandria – his shop is a place for exhibiting his “talking” sculptures. Although these sculptures take a long time to prepare, he sculpts them quickly. His shop also includes a number of animals, which he likes to tame.

Sherbini graduated from the Maritime Academy, one of the oldest private colleges in Alexandria. He picked up an interest in sculpting 20 years ago. He started by sculpting animals and then embraced expressionism. “I trained myself to feel others’ pain,” he says.

This training started after paying a visit to an acquaintance at a public hospital. He describes this visit as a turning point in his life. “I saw a poor woman begging to have dialysis and buy blood bags,” says Sherbini. “She was not admitted into the intensive care unit.”

The impact of this transformation started with drawing caricatures and then sculpting statues expressing corruption and injustice under Mubarak and then after the revolution and the accompanying Arab and international political changes.

Sherbini attempts to attract his customers to his world, which features many messages he hopes to deliver to a larger audience. Each statue has a name and meaning. He has also turned his social network page into a platform to publish his messages. He believes that the world is running after all that is material “while they are only watching bloodshed in countries like Syria.”

“Statures are worth thousands of photos,” he says pointing at an upside down statue of an Egyptian woman feeding her son on a small food table. “It expresses poverty and the topsy-turvy situation. This is Mon’em who has lost his mind due to injustice and considered the broom a musical instrument, which he plays using his shoes. This is struggler and coffee seller Ashour. That is a woman bathing her child, expressing traditions. And on the internal wall is a prisoner with a flower in his mouth.”

“I come here to see the latest sculptures and to buy my son a new pair of shoes at the same time,” says a customer.

“I came to see the animals,” says her son. “It is more beautiful than the zoo which only has goats.”

Sherbini says the statues have landed him in trouble. “Over 12 statues have been smashed,” he says. “I have been arrested about six times and threatened to stop writing or making more statues.”

 “I am not afraid as long as I express true things. I hope that one day I will be able to turn this place into a museum that expresses our concerns and our situation. I hope that officials become interested in such a dream,” he says.

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