A bright spot in an otherwise darkened Egypt

Over the past year, the Egyptian artist Mohamed Abla has made more than 60 mixed-media works that are fairy tales for adults from the hive mind of Eastern mythology. From afar, they are Pop art in pastels, but upon closer inspection his works synthesise collage and calligraphy, abstraction and tradition, the natural and the supernatural. None of these workswhich are on view at his show, titled On the Silk Road, at the Ofok Gallery in Cairo, the ministry of cultures premier contemporary exhibiti