El Marsam | Artists & Works on View

Closed Shops, 1982

Ink and Watercolor on hard paper

21.3 x 28.7 in

Courtesy of a Private Collection

Zeinab Abdel Hamid (1919-2002, Cairo, Egypt) was a major figure among Egypt’s modernist women artists, developing a distinctive visual language through expressive line, saturated colour, and unconventional perspectives. She was associated with the Contemporary Art Group, whose artists sought an authentic visual language rooted in Egyptian culture while embracing creative modernity.

Her paintings transformed the rapidly changing Egyptian city into a dynamic subject, from Cairo’s streets and cafés to its ports, shipyards, and working communities. Often viewing these scenes from above, she compressed and fragmented space to create energetic compositions that capture both the vitality of everyday life and the social transformations of modern Egypt.

Closed Shops exemplifies Abdel Hamid’s sustained interest in the rhythms of everyday Egyptian life. Executed in ink and watercolour on hard paper, the work reflects her focus on familiar urban settings and the lived experiences of ordinary people. Whereas many of her pieces exude a sense of celebration and mirth, Closed Shops is more subdued, suggestive of a late evening and closed shops when life quiets down.

She taught modern art at Helwan University’s Faculty of Art Education and exhibited extensively in Egypt and abroad. She represented Egypt at the Venice Biennale in 1958, was a finalist for the Guggenheim International Award in 1956 and continued exhibiting internationally throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

White Fish and a Woman’s Face, 2025

Acrylic on canvas

17.7 x 25.6 in

Courtesy of the artist

Souad Abdelrasoul (b. 1974, Cairo, Egypt) works across painting, drawing, sculpture, and graphic design, developing a hybrid visual language in which human bodies merge with botanical, animal, and aquatic forms. Her paintings frequently employ surreal imagery and layered symbolism to express psychological and existential themes. Her imagery challenges conventional representations of the female body, using transformation and symbolism to explore the entanglement of human experience with nature, cultural expectations, and emotional life.

White Fish and a Woman’s Face can be understood within this broader vocabulary of transformation. The woman, water, and organic forms operate not as separate subjects but as interconnected elements, suggesting a fluid relationship between the body, landscape, and psychological experience. The work reflects Abdelrasoul’s recurring interest in women’s resilience and vulnerability, while the presence of water evokes the Nile as both a physical landscape and a metaphor for movement, survival, renewal, and change.

Abdelrasoul has exhibited extensively in Egypt and internationally since 1998. Her work is included in the collections of the Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin; the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts; and the Museum of Modern Art in Cairo, and she was featured in Phaidon’s book Great Women Painters (2022).

Figure #6, 2020 From the you can’t recognize what you don’t know series, 2020-2021 Unique photo collage 11.8 x 8.5 in Courtesy of TINTERA

Figure #54, 2021 From the you can’t recognize what you don’t know series, 2020-2021 Unique photo collage 9.7 x 15.4 in Courtesy of TINTERA

Ibrahim Ahmed (b. 1984, Kuwait) works across photography, mixed media, sculpture, and installation. His practice investigates histories of peoples and objects through themes of colonization, structures of power, cultural interaction, identity, and masculinity. His work contributes to contemporary dialogues within modern Egyptian art by examining how social and cultural systems shape individual identity.

The featured works belong to his series you can’t recognise what you don’t know, an iteration of Ahmed’s ongoing project i never revealed myself to them. Using unique photo collages made from studio portraits and documented performances, Ahmed cuts, layers, and reconstructs images of the male body to examine masculinity as a performed identity. Drawing on references ranging from local photography studios and bodybuilders to mannequins and Pharaonic and Greco-Roman sculpture, the series questions inherited ideals of manhood and the social construction of masculine power.

Raised between Bahrain, Egypt, and the United States, Ahmed lives and works in Cairo. He has presented solo exhibitions in Cairo, Richmond, Nottingham, Rome, Marseille, New York, Giza, and Newark, and has participated in international exhibitions including the Sharjah Art Museum, Dakar Biennial, Havana Biennial, and the Biennale Internationale de Casablanca.

La Mere Noire, 2010

Diary of the Future Series

Digital photo-montage print

43.3 x 43.3 in

Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery

 

Lara Baladi’s (b. 1969, Lebanon) work explores the intersections of myth, memory, personal archives, sociopolitical narratives and history through photography, digital collage, video, sound pieces, installation, tapestry, and sculpture. Her practice is rooted in collecting, interpreting, and reinterpreting images across multiple media. La Mere Noire belongs to Lara Baladi’s Diary of the Future series, created during the final months of her father’s life. The work grew from the intimate ritual of Arabic coffee-cup reading, which Baladi transformed into a visual meditation on mortality, memory, and the continuity of life. She asked visitors to her father to turn their cups upside down three times after drinking their coffee, tap them twice, and inscribe them with their name and the date; the cups were then preserved and photographed, recording the traces left by these shared encounters. Baladi assembled the resulting images into intricate, lace-like digital collages of dark, circular forms that evoke arabesques, mandalas, and stained-glass windows. By transforming a familiar indigenous tradition and practice of reading coffee grounds into a complex visual language, La Mere Noire intertwines intimate family experience with ritual, interpretation, and collective memory, while reflecting Baladi’s broader engagement with and expansion of contemporary Egyptian visual and cultural traditions.

Based in Cairo since 1997, Baladi has exhibited internationally, and her work is in major museum collections, including the collections of Fondation LVMH, Paris; Middlebury College Museum of Art, Vermont; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis; the Chase Collection, New York; Pori Art Museum, Helsinki; Museet for Fotokunst, Copenhagen; and Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris. She received the Grand Nile Prize at the 2008-09 Cairo International Contemporary Art Biennale for Borg el Amal (Tower of Hope).

Oasis de Bahareya, 1987

Oil on canvas

27.6 x 19.7 in

Courtesy of a Private Collection

 

Inji Efflatoun (1924-1989, Cairo, Egypt) was a major figure in Egyptian modernism whose artistic practice developed alongside her commitment to feminist and communist politics. Initially influenced by Surrealism through her studies with artist Kamel El-Telmissany and the Art and Liberty movement, she gradually developed a more direct and socially engaged visual language, turning her attention to women, workers, rural communities and the inequalities shaping Egyptian society. Her imprisonment between 1959 and 1963 for her membership in the Egyptian Communist Party and her long record of activism, marked a profound turning point in her artistic practice.  After her release, her paintings opened into a brighter, more expansive palette and increasingly dynamic compositions, while retaining her longstanding commitment to the lives and struggles of ordinary Egyptians.

Efflatoun lived and worked in Cairo throughout her career. She represented Egypt at the Venice Biennale (1952) and the São Paulo Biennial (1953), later exhibiting extensively in Egypt and internationally. Her work has been widely acquired by international museums, including the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art in Cairo and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha.

The Snake Eater, year unknown Oil on cardboard 8.3 x 26.7 in Courtesy of the collection of Naguib Sawiris	A Man and an Ewer, year unknown Colored pencil on paper 7.9 x 11.8 in; framed: 13 x 16.9 in Courtesy of the collection of Mr. Naguib Sawiris

Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar (1925-1966, Alexandria, Egypt) was one of the most imaginative pioneers of Egypt’s modernist visual arts movement. A member of the artist group initially dubbed ‘The Group of Contemporary Art,’ he was among the leading proponents of surrealism. His practice moved through distinct stages: an early metaphysical period incorporating religious symbolism, folklore, and scenes from the moulid saint celebration festivals of Cairo’s Sayyida Zeinab district, followed by a focus on the poverty of the city’s working class. After studying in Rome in the late 1950s, he turned to images of industrialization and complex machines, referring to Nasser’s socialist projects.

The Snake Eater demonstrates El-Gazzar’s engagement with the human figure and man’s relationship, both literal and symbolic, with animals. A Man and an Ewer, on the other hand, reflects his fascination with everyday Egyptian life. The symbolic imagery that characterizes much of his work is seen here, evidenced by the inclusion of large, gnarled hands and bulbous omniscient eyes of the figure, which can be seen in other works by the artist. Gazzar’s paintings helped redefine modern Egyptian art vernacular by drawing on subjects and symbols of local traditions and everyday life rather than those found at the time in the Western art canon.

Having studied at Cairo’s School of Fine Arts and later at the Central Restoration Institute in Rome, El-Gazzar exhibited in Egypt and abroad. He held his first solo show at Cairo’s Museum of Modern Art in 1950, participated in the Venice Biennale in 1952, 1956, and 1960, and won a Bronze Medal at the São Paulo Biennale in 1957.

Chamber of Commerce (Harvest), 2026

Porcelain on Marmox board, wood, and binding

47.2 x 23.6 in

Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery

Yasmine El Meleegy (b. 1991, Cairo, Egypt) is a multidisciplinary artist and sculptor whose practice spans sculpture, installation, writing, and site-specific intervention. Working with porcelain tableware, craft processes, and industrial materials, she investigates the political language of repair, preservation, public monuments, and memory in Egypt. Drawing from state-sponsored murals, mass production, and personal archives, her work examines how public memory and collective imaginaries become embedded in everyday materials and surfaces. Her practice also reflects on the history of porcelain in Egypt and its relationship to nationalism, placing her work within ongoing conversations in modern Egyptian art.

Chamber of Commerce (Harvest) continues Yasmine El Meleegy’s engagement with porcelain as both material and historical record, while revisiting the legacy of Egyptian sculptor and industrialist Fathy Mahmoud (1918–1982). Celebrated for his monumental public sculptures and for establishing a mid-20th-century porcelain factory, Mahmoud saw art and design as accessible forms of public culture within the aspirations of post-independence Egypt. El Meleegy draws specifically on his mural for Cairo’s Chamber of Commerce, in which hands cradle freshly harvested wheat, and on his broader celebration of labourers, farmers, factory workers, and fishermen as symbols of national self-sufficiency. Using shattered and reassembled porcelain sourced from Mahmoud’s factory, she transforms functional dinnerware into a sculptural reflection on craft, labour, industrial production, and collective memory. In doing so, the work also extends a longstanding Egyptian visual tradition of representing agriculture and the relationship between people and the land, connecting ancient depictions of rural life with the modernist practices of artists such as Inji Efflatoun and Hamed Oweis.

Based in Cairo, El Meleegy has showcased at Egyptian and international institutions and exhibitions including the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; FOR Space, Basel; and Gypsum Gallery, Cairo. She received grants from AFAC, Mophradat, Culture Resource–Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy, Lieux Publics, and Pro Helvetia, and her work is held in the collection of MOCA Yinchuan, China.

The Pelican, 2024 Oil on canvas 5.9 x 5.9 in Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery

Statue, 2019-2025 Oil on canvas 5.9 x 5.9 in Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery

Nada Elkalaawy (b. 1995, Alexandria, Egypt) examines the ways images shift between truth and fiction. Working primarily in figurative painting, she explores themes of memory, presence and absence, belonging, and transformation. Drawing from family photographs, still lifes, art-historical references, and found images, she creates layered compositions in which objects, shadows, and reflective surfaces evoke personal histories while challenging fixed narratives.

The small paintings, Statue and The Pelican, reflect Nada Elkalaawy’s sustained interest in the emotional and expressive potential of everyday domestic objects, particularly porcelain figures and chinaware found in family homes. Through luminous, reflective surfaces and tightly cropped compositions, Elkalaawy isolates these familiar forms within ambiguous spaces, encouraging viewers to reconsider objects as vessels of memory, narrative, and emotion. Her process of layering, revision, and accumulated traces creates a sense of nostalgia, evoking the histories and lives embedded within domestic spaces. By shifting attention towards surface, scale, and detail, Elkalaawy transforms ordinary objects into enigmatic images in which multiple temporalities converge, exploring the ways memory is shaped through perception, recollection, nostalgia, and the passage of time.

Elkalaawy lives and works between London, the UK, and Cairo, Egypt. She holds degrees from the Slade School of Fine Art and Kingston University, London. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and she has participated in artist residencies with Pro Helvetia in Bern; Montresso Art Foundation in Marrakech, Morocco; and L’appartement 22 in Rabat.

Upon the Margins of Dream-Land, 2024

Jacquard-woven tapestry crafted from cotton

83.8 x 61.8 in

Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery

 

Laws of Ruins, 2024

4K film

15 minutes

Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery

Marianne Fahmy’s (b. 1992, Alexandria, Egypt) work spans film and installation, alongside video, photography, sculpture, and mixed media. Her art analyses identity through metaphors of topography, with seascapes and deserts recurring as symbols, while engaging with questions of identity, landscape, and historical memory.

Marianne Fahmy’s tapestry Upon the Margins of Dream-Land and her film Laws of Ruins emerge from her sustained investigation of archives, historical memory, and Egypt’s environmental and socio-political futures. In Upon the Margins of Dream-Land, Fahmy imagines Alexandria’s vulnerability to rising sea levels and land subsidence, considering how environmental transformation could reshape the city and displace its population towards satellite desert cities. Through jacquard weaving, she interlaces found materials and images of her own making with fragments of lived and forgotten histories, creating a speculative landscape in which memory, myth, and possible futures converge.

Laws of Ruins similarly reimagines the past through a para-fictional exploration of water, positioning demolished water cisterns as potential sites of resistance, renewal, and collective memory. Combining archival and original footage with a poetic voice-over incorporating excerpts from the memoirs of Egyptian activist Arwa Saleh, Fahmy brings together political history and ecological change, transforming sites of disappearance into spaces through which alternative futures might be imagined. Across both works, archival fragments, architectural remains, and imagined narratives become vehicles for reconstructing marginalised histories and considering how the past can be preserved, reinterpreted, and carried into an uncertain future.

Based in Alexandria, Egypt, Fahmy earned a BA in painting before joining the MASS Alexandria independent art program. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Sharjah Biennial; MAXXI Museum, Rome; Manifesta 13, Marseille; and the Havana Biennale. She received the Prince Claus Fund Seed Award in 2021, and her work is held in the collections of Frac Bretagne and the Sharjah Art Foundation.

Three Brass Players, 2014

Oil on canvas, laid on board

63 x 47.2 in

Courtesy of the collection of Samir Fouad

 

Samir Fouad (b. 1944, Cairo, Egypt) is regarded as one of Egypt’s foremost watercolorists. His later oil paintings embrace an expressionist style that blends artistic heritage with modernism while remaining distinctly Egyptian in character.  A central concern is the passing of time, which he conveys through movement rather than static form, alongside his exploration of human existence and the relationship between music and the visual arts.

Three Brass Players belongs to a series of paintings about musicians made between 2009 and 2014 titled Tonalities. The series was intended to highlight the correlation between the key in music and the color tone in painting, with this work furthering the act of music to metaphorically represent the human struggle against all odds by presenting the motion of the players’ frantic actions visually dissolving into the instruments.

Based in Cairo, Fouad graduated from Cairo University with a bachelor’s degree in communications engineering in 1966. He turned to art full-time after retiring in 2001. He represented Egypt at the International Watercolor Biennale in Mexico City in 2001 and the International Luxor Symposium in 2011, co-exhibited with Italian artist Franco Rizoli in Venice in 2016, and in 2018 was honored with a major retrospective by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture in Cairo.

Azbakeya (Sun Disk), 2018

Acrylic and 24k gold leaf on hand-cut paper

28 x 74 in

Courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles

Contemporary artist Sherin Guirguis (Luxor, Egypt) bases her practice on research to explore power, agency, social transformation and the recovery of marginalized histories, particularly those of women. Drawing on history, architecture, craft traditions, language and poetry, her work investigates overlooked narratives and makes visible the labor and contributions of historically under-recognized women.

Azbakeya (Sun Disk) forms part of Guirguis’ exploration of Egyptian feminism through history and memory, with a particular focus on feminist writer and activist Doria Shafik. Inspired by Shafik’s 1928 speech at Cairo’s Azbakeya Gardens, the work references the ornamental fence surrounding the gardens through its intricate hand-cut geometric pattern. The symbolism of the sun in Egypt—with its multiple meanings and references—spans millennia. In Ancient Egypt, it represented the origin of life, death and rebirth, and the divine; today, it speaks to identity, visibility and collective survival — a fitting metaphor for the Egyptian women’s movement and its struggle for equal rights and societal recognition.

The process of cutting through paper reflects Guirguis’ ongoing practice of excavating archives and recovering overlooked histories, while the addition of paint and gold leaf creates a dialogue between concealment and revelation.

Based in Los Angeles, California, Guirguis has exhibited internationally, and her work is in many private international art collections. Her recent exhibitions include Of Thorns and Love at the Craft Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles, 2018; Bint El Nil at the Tahrir Cultural Center, American University in Cairo, 2019; Desert X Al-Ula, 2020; Forever Is Now, Cairo, 2022; and commissions for METRO Los Angeles.

The Break, 2011

Upekkha Series

Photography, digital collage

23.6 x 23.6 in

Courtesy of TINTERA

 

Nermine Hammam (b. 1967, Cairo, Egypt) is a photo artist who trained as a filmmaker at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, turning to photography as an artistic medium in the late 1990s. Her practice begins with the photograph and moves through digital manipulation, directly painting onto the image, collage, and archival layering, staging familiar images such as the soldier, the icon and the wounded body, to work them until they start to take on alternative meaning, metaphors or symbolic imagery.

The Break is a digital collage from the Upekkha Series, made in the year following the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The series embeds soldiers photographed in Tahrir Square within early nineteenth-century idyllic pastoral postcard landscapes and eighteenth-century Japanese screens. By placing symbols of military power within scenes of beauty and leisure, Hammam unsettles their familiar meanings and allows the soldiers themselves to appear unexpectedly vulnerable.  Through this deliberate contradiction and visual play — placing men of war within paradise and riot police against painted cranes — Hammam evokes the absurd, provoking questions about the world we occupy today and creating a tension between violence and tenderness.

Hammam currently lives between Cairo and London. She has exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, with her work in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam, and Durham University. She received the Freedom to Create First Prize in 2011.

Dawn Portraits, 2023 Gouache and oil pastels on paper 16.5 x 19.6 in framed Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery	The Knot, 2022 Found wooden shoe molds and flax strings Dimensions variable Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery

Huda Lutfi’s (b. 1947, Cairo, Egypt) visual artistic practice draws on her background in cultural and gender history, combining art history and contemporary Egyptian culture. Her work incorporates found and discarded objects, popular culture, and historical and spiritual references, while exploring urban life, memory, and Sufi traditions.

Huda Lutfi’s Dawn Portraits and The Knot reveal two complementary aspects of her practice, bringing together memory, contemplation, gender, spirituality, and Cairo’s material and cultural history. In the ongoing Dawn Portraits series, the quiet hours of early morning become a space for introspection and emotional reflection. Rather than depicting specific sitters, Lutfi paints faces from memory in gouache and oil pastel on Chinese gold-leaf paper, creating tightly cropped, sculptural portraits presented frontally or in profile. Their asymmetrical and often androgynous features challenge conventional representations of femininity, while delicate jewelry introduces a softness that contrasts with their severity, extending Lutfi’s sustained exploration of gender and identity beyond fixed categories. In The Knot, she turns instead to discarded wooden shoe molds, collected from Cairo’s old shoe factories and transformed into a circular installation.

These found objects form part of Lutfi’s broader practice of collecting and recontextualizing remnants from the city’s streets, markets, factories, and antique shops, treating them as fragments of Cairo’s material and cultural memory. Arranged in repetition, the molds evoke the cyclical movement of dhikr, the Sufi practice of remembrance, suggesting a passage from the noise and movement of urban life towards meditation and stillness. Together, the works demonstrate Lutfi’s ability to transform both remembered faces and discarded objects into sites of reflection, where personal memory intersects with questions of identity, spirituality, and the layered history of the city.

Living and working in Cairo, Lutfi has exhibited internationally and received the Grand Prize at the Alexandria Biennial for Mediterranean Countries in 2014, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture Artist Award in 2009, and the Ford Foundation Artist Award in 1999. Her work is held in the collections of institutions including the British Museum, London, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha.

2026, 2010

Single-channel digital video, black-and-white, sound

8 min., 21 sec.

Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery

 

Maha Maamoun (b.1972, California) is a Cairo-based Egyptian artist whose practice centers on photography and video, examining how images circulate through popular culture and how they shape personal and collective narratives. Through subtle interventions — including cropping, editing, juxtaposition, montage, and staged reconstruction — she recontextualizes familiar images from cinema, the media, and the public domain, often exploring questions of memory, history, national identity, and representation. Since 2007, her work has also repeatedly returned to the Pyramids of Giza as a cultural and visual motif.

In Maha Maamoun’s film, 2026, a time traveler recounts his vision of the Pyramids area — and, by extension, Egypt — in the year 2026. The man lies in a hammock, wearing an eye mask with cables running along his body, re-enacting an iconic scene from Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962). Yet rather than post-apocalyptic Paris, the scene unfolds in a deserted building in contemporary Cairo. And, in place of Chris Marker’s voiceover, the protagonist in 2026 recounts a scene from Mahmoud Othman’s Arabic-language science fiction novel The Revolution 2053 – The Beginning (2007), of a future that is an exhausted reformulation of the present.

Maamoun’s work has been exhibited internationally at major institutions including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; and Haus der Kunst, Munich. Her work has also been presented at major international biennials and festivals, including the Singapore Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Jakarta Biennale, Sharjah Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Berlinale, and Dak’art Biennale. Her works are part of significant public and private collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York; Deutsche Bank; Bonnefantenmuseum; MuHKA; Sharjah Art Foundation; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; FRAC Poitou-Charentes; and FRAC Bretagne.

Sanary-Sur-Mer, 1956

Oil on canvas

21.3 x 25.6 in (unframed)

Courtesy of the collection of Mr. Selim Gouda

Antoine Malliarakis (1905-1990, Port Said, Egypt), known as Mayo, was a Greek-Egyptian artist whose practice occupied a distinctive position between the Surrealist and Art and Liberty movements. Although he exhibited with the Art and Liberty movement in Cairo, he resisted a fixed artistic affiliation, instead developing a personal language that drew on realism, Surrealism, and poetry. His paintings often possess a quiet, enigmatic quality, in which landscapes and figures become vehicles for ambiguity, atmosphere, and poetic association.

Sanary-sur-Mer presents a restrained coastal landscape, where trees, rock formations, and water are brought together through an expressive handling of paint. Broken brushwork and subtle shifts between blue, green, ochre, and pink create a sense of movement across the surface while retaining the stillness of the scene. Rather than simply recording the landscape, Mayo transforms it into an atmospheric and psychologically charged space.

Based primarily in France and later Italy, Mayo also worked as a costume designer for theater and film. His work has been acquired by significant museum and private collections, including the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, the Barjeel Art Foundation, and the Dalloul Art Foundation, and has appeared in international exhibitions dedicated to modern Egyptian art and Surrealism.

I, Pet Lion (Galaxy Attack), 2025 Acrylic and ink on found fabric 18.9 x 14.2 in Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery   I, Pet Lion (Galaxy Attack), 2025 Acrylic and ink on found fabric 20.5 x 14.6 in Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery   I, Pet Lion (Galaxy Attack), 2025 Acrylic and ink on found fabric 6.5 x 12.6 in Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery

Mohamed Monaiseer (b. 1989, Cairo, Egypt) is a contemporary artist whose practice examines colonial history, power, and conflict through objects associated with child’s play. Drawing on painting, embroidery, and khayamiya appliqué (Egyptian quilting), he combines the repetitive gestures of Islamic art with deliberate irregularities to question systems of control. His work explores how the aesthetics of domination can become embedded in everyday rituals and how games, symbols, and mythology reflect broader political and historical structures.

The I, Pet Lion (Galaxy Attack) series investigates how colonial histories continue to shape collective consciousness. Using found fabric, Monaiseer transforms imagery associated with games and childhood into metaphors for authority, warfare, and submission. The lion functions as both protector and predator, highlighting the contradictions of power. The artworks reference the banners and crests that would have historically served as military paraphernalia. Although they do not necessarily allude to present-day warfare, they simultaneously do subtly speak of the absurdities of ongoing conflicts.

Monaiseer lives and works in Cairo. His I, Pet Lion series was first presented by Gypsum Gallery at Art Basel Qatar in 2026.

Le Christ, 1957

Oil on wood

51.2 x 26.0 in

Courtesy of the collection of Ms. Mona Barakat

 

Ahmed Morsi (b. 1930, Alexandria, Egypt) is a pivotal figure in Egyptian art, working across painting, poetry, art, and literary criticism. He is considered both a modernist and contemporary artist due to his long and prolific career, the evolution of his work both thematically and stylistically, and subsequently the many phases of his artistic practice. His enigmatic, often surrealist imagery draws on symbolism, memory, dreams, and the subconscious, while his sustained engagement with Arabic poetry became central to his visual language. For Morsi, painting and poetry were not separate practices but interconnected forms through which he explored questions of existence, displacement, memory, and the human condition.

Le Christ belongs to a formative period early on in Morsi’s career, during which he explored symbolic imagery alongside religious, folkloric, and human themes. The work reflects his early engagement with a study of the human subject, while drawing on the visual traditions of Coptic art and iconography that contributed to the development of modern Egyptian art. Le Christ seemingly visually references Fayoum portraiture, which was some of the earliest examples in the global art canon of realism in portraiture. The naturalistic painted funerary portraits were produced in Roman Egypt, particularly in the Fayoum region, from around the 1st to 3rd centuries CE. They were painted on wooden panels and placed over mummified bodies, depicting individuals with strikingly lifelike faces, and preserved a unique fusion of Egyptian funerary traditions and Greco-Roman artistic techniques. Morsi seemingly further develops and modernises this tradition by enlarging the face and using intensely saturated colours — a visual signature that would come to define his later work — to depict the figure of Christ.

Morsi lives and works between the United States and Egypt. He co-founded the influential avant-garde magazine Galerie ’68 and was the first Egyptian to design sets and costumes for the National Theatre. His work is held in major collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; the British Museum, London; and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha.

Say Goodbye, self-portrait, Alexandria, 2009

Exhibition print

19.7 x 29.5 in

Courtesy of Youssef Nabil and Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City)

 

Self Portrait with Pyramid, Cairo, 2009

Exhibition print

19.7 x 29.5 in

Courtesy of Youssef Nabil and Mariane Ibrahim (Chicago, Paris, Mexico City)

 

Youssef Nabil (b. 1972, Cairo, Egypt) is known for his hand-colored photographic prints, which draw on the visual language of Egyptian cinema, vintage studio portraiture, and the heightened color of early film. A student of Armenian-Egyptian photographer Van Leo, Nabil’s practice is imbued with subtle references to that of his mentor while further distinguishing his work by creating various series encapsulating staged vignettes. His photographs frequently transform memory into an imagined past, bringing together questions of identity, nostalgia, exile, desire, and belonging. Egypt occupies a particularly important place within this imagined landscape, appearing not simply as a geographical location but as a place reconstructed through personal memory and fantasy.

Say Goodbye, Self-Portrait, Alexandria and Self-Portrait with Pyramid, Cairo, both made in 2009, belong to Nabil’s sustained exploration of self-portraiture. In Say Goodbye, the artist’s departure from Egypt becomes both a personal narrative and a meditation on exile. Seen from behind, he appears to be moving away from Alexandria towards an uncertain horizon. The pyramid in the second work similarly places the artist within an imagined Egyptian landscape, connecting his own identity to the country’s cultural and historical memory.

Nabil has exhibited internationally, and his work is in major museum and private collections, including the Pinault Collection; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; the British Museum, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; and the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris. His first major retrospective, Once Upon a Dream, was presented in 2020–21 at Palazzo Grassi in Venice. He was awarded the Seydou Keïta Prize for Portraiture in 2003 and made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2022.

Untitled (Fishing Boats), 1984

Oil on canvas, laid on wood

33.9 x 26 in

Courtesy of the collection of Mr. Rashid Kamel

Hamed Nada (1924 – 1990, Cairo, Egypt) was a central figure in Egypt’s postwar modernist movement and a member of the Group of Contemporary Art. Drawing on his childhood in Cairo’s popular working-class neighborhoods, he developed a highly personal visual language populated by references to folklore, popular belief, spirituality, and the supernatural. His paintings combine stylized figures and symbolic imagery to explore both the realities of everyday Egyptian life and the psychological worlds that lie beneath it.

Untitled (Fishing Boats) brings together boats, fishermen, and fish within a compressed, shallow pictorial space. Rather than constructing a conventional sense of depth, Nada allows the forms to occupy the surface almost symbolically, using distortion and simplification to give each figure or object expressive weight. The resulting image moves beyond straightforward representation of a fishing scene, transforming the landscape into a rhythm of interconnected forms.

Nada studied mural painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid from 1960, returning to Egypt in 1962 to teach at the Faculty of Fine Arts. He became head of the Painting Department in 1977 and won the Grand Prize at the Alexandria Biennale in both 1956 and 1962.

The Two Zodiac Signs, 1990

Oil and collage on board

49.6 x 33.8 in

Courtesy of a Private Collection

 

Born into a prominent Alexandrian family and sister to the modernist pioneer Mohamed Naghi, Effat Naghi’s (1905-1994, Alexandria, Egypt) oeuvre boasts artistic styles that span from classical portraiture, landscape, and still life to the distinctive abstract compositions for which she became best known. Her style was profoundly influenced by the visual language of Pharaonic art and architecture, as well as that of the Egyptian folk traditions, including astrology, voodooism, black magic, and talismanic script.

From the 1950s, Naghi’s art turned increasingly towards spirituality, mysticism, and death, incorporating symbols, schematized shapes, and abstracted Arabic writing, all of which are themes prominent in The Two Zodiac Signs. The work is a combination of painting and collaging of small, tight Arabic script written by Naghi on small torn scraps of paper, alluding to the practice in Egyptian black magic of burning away fears or casting spells. The work reflects her interest in symbolism and her synthesis of modernist abstraction with references to Egyptian culture and visual heritage.

Effat Naghi received formal training in Rome in 1947, where she studied fresco and sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti, and in Paris in 1949, where she attended the academy of cubist painter André Lhote. She exhibited widely, with solo shows in Cairo, Alexandria, Rome, and Venice, and participated in the Venice Biennale in 1950, 1952, and 1956, and the São Paulo Biennial in 1953, 1959, and 1963.

Untitled, [date unknown]

Oil on canvas

33.1 x 44.9 in

Courtesy of the collection of Ms. Mona Barakat

 

Ahmed Maher Raef (1926-1999, Cairo, Egypt) was an influential Egyptian artist whose practice moved between painting, printmaking, and drawing. His early work, shaped partly by surrealist and figurative approaches, addressed Egyptian rural life, popular beliefs, and the experiences of ordinary and working-class communities. After studying printmaking at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, he increasingly turned towards abstraction, incorporating the Arabic letter and calligraphic forms into his compositions. His later work was deeply informed by his engagement with Arabic calligraphy and Sufi thought.

The featured Untitled work reflects the breadth of Raef’s practice, in which painting existed alongside his sustained experimentation with printmaking and drawing. Across these media, he moved between figuration and abstraction, using the human figure, geometric forms, and Arabic script to investigate questions of spirituality, psychology, tradition, and modernity.

Raef returned to Egypt in 1961 and joined the teaching staff of the Printmaking Department at the College of Fine Arts in Alexandria, where he became professor and head of the department in 1975. He served as Dean of the School of Fine Arts at Alexandria University from 1979 to 1986, before moving to the United States. He died in New Jersey in 1999. He received the Mahmoud Moukhtar Award for Drawing in 1950 and represented Egypt at the 1980 Venice Biennale.

Les Trois Amis, 1954

Oil on board

27.1 x 19.2 in

Courtesy of the collection of Mr. Naguib Sawiris

 

Man and Woman with Scorpio, 1988

Oil on board panel

27.5 x 23.6 in

Courtesy of the collection of Mr. Naguib Sawiris

Samir Rafi was an Egyptian painter and a prominent figure in modern Egyptian art. His work moved between still-life studies and surrealist compositions. Across his career he concentrated on metaphysical and universal themes such as fertility, the passage of time, the human condition, and the adversities of life. In his later years, he repeatedly painted the female figure with a wolf, a motif that drew criticism for suggesting bestiality, while others read the wolf as a traditional trope in Egyptian folklore, symbolizing obstacles and deception.

Man and Woman with Scorpio and Les Trois Amis reflect Rafi’s engagement with figurative subjects and the symbolic language that characterized much of his artistic practice. They reflect the recurring presence of figures and animals that run through Rafi’s imagery. Les Trois Amis features two men, wearing the style of loose clothing often worn by peasants or farmers, sleeping next to a snake.

From a young age he exhibited with the Surrealist group, Art et Liberté, and went on to become a leading member of the Contemporary Art Group. Among his early distinctions was winning the Gold Prize at the Salon du Caire in 1942 for his painting Coquillage. After receiving a government scholarship, Rafi moved to Paris in 1954 to pursue doctoral studies in art history at the Sorbonne. He served as a cultural art advisor to the Algerian president Ahmed Ben Bella and the Algerian Ministry of National Education for a period until Ben Bella was forcibly removed through a coup d’etat.  He spent his later years in Paris, where he continued to paint, exhibit, and write until his death in 2004.

Adam and Eve, 1937
Oil on panel

31.2 x 22 in

Courtesy of a Private Collection

 

Mahmoud Saïd (1897-1964, Alexandria, Egypt) was regarded as one of the pioneers of modern Egyptian art, having established a unique style that would inspire and influence younger generations of Egyptian artists. His style fused European art movements and styles, such as Impressionism, with Ancient Egyptian art traditions, such as a strongly outlined figure. His distinct style of fusing Pharaonic motifs of vegetation and animals with their Egyptian symbolism and local subject matter was enhanced by his distinct command of shadow and light. Light, by Saïd, was skilfully rendered to project the sunshine and verdant green shades of the Egyptian countryside, or the luminescence of a subject’s wheat-gold skin tone. Other subjects included the waters of the Nile, the port city of Alexandria and its fishermen, and portraits of society figures and family members.

Adam and Eve is one of only a few works in his oeuvre to explore human romantic relationships, and one of his rare references to traditional religious iconography. Saïd places this Biblical subject within a traditional Egyptian setting, a lush oasis by the Nile, the two statuesque figures echoing the Amarna style of Ancient Egyptian sculpture, which was characterized by naturalistic and intimate renderings of subjects, oftentimes with exaggerated features. The subjects’ features are rendered to accurately reflect ethnic Egyptian features, such as large almond-shaped eyes and prominent foreheads.

Saïd was born into an aristocratic family in Alexandria, where he grew up, and the family villa today houses the Mahmoud Saïd Museum. Trained in law, he obtained his Bachelor of Laws in 1919 in Alexandria before studying in Paris and devoting himself to art. He was showcased locally and internationally in Cairo, Alexandria, New York, Paris, Venice, and Madrid. In 1951, he was admitted to the French Légion d’Honneur with a medal for Honorary Merit, and in 1960 he became the first artist awarded the State Merit Award for Arts by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Fengan Qahwa, c. early 1940s

Gouache on paper

3.9 x 5.3 in (unframed)

Courtesy of the collection of Mr. Selim Gouda

 

Marcel Salinas (1913-2010, Alexandria, Egypt) was born in Alexandria to a French mother and an Italian father — one of many foreigners living in the city at the time who identified as, and were considered, Egyptian.  Influenced by the French painter and theorist André Lhote, Salinas emphasized form, colour, technique, and disciplined observation throughout his practice. Although he explored stylistic approaches including Cubism and Fauvism, his work remained committed to the expressive possibilities of light, colour, and form.

Fengan Qahwa, which translates to ‘cup of coffee’ in Arabic, is a gouache on paper depicting a traditional Egyptian coffee pot alongside a coffee cup and saucer. The work reflects Salinas’ interest in everyday subjects, and the painting shows Salinas’ ability to articulate and render shape in simplified yet bold strokes, with careful attention to colour, form, and composition. A foreigner in Egypt, Salinas’ career in Egypt and the subjects he depicted point to Egypt’s diverse artistic milieu and the cross-pollination of ideas and subjects that inspired many artists living and working in Egypt in the early twentieth century.

Following the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, Salinas settled in Paris, where he became an accomplished lithographer while continuing to paint. He later lived and worked between Paris, New York, Brussels, and St. Louis. His collaborations with Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Erté, together with gallery shows in New York and Paris between the 1960s–1980s, and exhibitions in major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Tate Modern, London, in more recent years, attest to his significant influence. Salinas might be a lesser-known modernist amongst the group of Egyptian modernists, but his contributions were just as significant as those of his contemporaries.

Untitled, 1951
Oil on canvas laid on board

17.8 x 23.6 in

Courtesy of a Private Collection

 

Youssef Sida (1922-1994, Damietta, Egypt) was a painter famously associated with Egypt’s modern art movement. His work is distinguished by his use of saturated colours applied thickly onto canvas, akin to the qualities of children’s art; his style underscored the simplicity of the subject while achieving a notable expressionist sophistication. In his formative years, he explored popular Egyptian themes and scenes from daily life. In later years, he experimented with Arabic calligraphy, concentrating on the forms and shapes dominant in popular Egyptian motifs and decor.

Dating from the early period in which Sida worked through popular Egyptian subjects and scenes of everyday life, Untitled depicts a crowded artist studio or art classroom interior of figures, framed pictures, and easel-like wooden stands. They are shown in bold, unmixed outlines with colour applied straight from the paint tube. This painting is but a small glimpse into what the art world of modern Egypt was like, with artist studios serving as places of community gathering, teaching, studying, and learning.

Based mostly in Egypt, Sida earned a degree from the Higher Institute of Educational Art in 1945 and was instrumental in establishing the influential Group of Modern Art in 1947. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study art at the University of Minnesota in 1950, later studying at Columbia University in New York and exhibiting in the United States.

[unknown title], [unknown year]

Oil on canvas

22.8 x 22.8 in

Courtesy of the collection of Ms. Mona Barakat

 

The Family, 1981

People and Houses Series

Oil on canvas

27.5 x 21.6 in

Courtesy of a Private Collection

 

Gazbia Sirry’s (1925-2021, Cairo, Egypt) work mostly explores Egyptian identity and social change through the prism of the lives of Egyptian women. A member of the Modern Art Group, which was founded in 1947, Sirry combined Western pictorial techniques with references to Pharaonic, Coptic, and local Egyptian artistic traditions. Her paintings frequently center on women and working-class communities while reflecting themes of nationalism and social justice. From the late 1960s, her style shifted from figuration toward abstract expressionism, and after the October 1973 war she turned to the desert and the Red Sea as subjects, drawing on impressions of sand and rock and the form of the pyramid in a more abstract, geometric vein.

Both artworks center a female subject in their respective compositions.  The Family reflects Sirry’s sustained interest in the roles of women within the spheres of family and Egyptian society, with the painting centring the mother figure most prominently, drawing her as the largest figure and positioning her to one side of her family, their gaze directed towards her. In Untitled, the mother figure is placed with exposed breasts against a backdrop whirl of abstracted faces and bodies to represent society. The figure’s exaggerated female anatomy can be read both as a symbol of motherhood and as a metaphor for what births, feeds, and sustains a society.

Sadly, Sirry’s inability to have children was frequently referenced with subtlety in her works, having painted the subjects of motherhood and children in much of her work both as a statement of the importance of the mother figure and as a statement of defiance against a strongly patriarchal society.

Based in Cairo throughout most of her career, Sirry studied in Cairo, Paris, Rome, and London before teaching art in Egypt for more than two decades. She represented Egypt at international exhibitions from the 1950s to the 1980s, including the São Paulo, Venice, and Alexandria Biennales, and received government scholarships that enabled her to devote herself to painting.

Musicians, c. 1960s-80s

Oil on board

49 x 75 in

Courtesy of the Private Collection of Laila Hassan Soliman, from the Estate of Hassan Soliman

 

Hailing from a generation of activist artists, Hassan Soliman’s (1928-2008, Cairo, Egypt) generation vied to establish a national identity unencumbered by Western influence and one which was uniquely Egyptian in spirit and tradition.  Soliman produced still lifes, portraits, and landscape paintings of his country. His work is marked by a minimal and subdued palette, a subtle use of light and shadow to create drama, and a studied approach to figuration. His subjects included scenes of historic Islamic Cairo and its inhabitants.

The troupe of musicians featured in Soliman’s Musicians are figural subjects playing traditional reed instruments and drums, commonly seen during moulids — saint celebrations held in neighbourhoods near mosques and shrines. Although moulid musicians typically symbolize celebration and fanfare, the painting’s subdued palette and sombre composition suggest disappointment rather than celebration. The work was likely painted in reaction to Egypt’s defeat by Israeli forces in 1967, a dark moment in Egyptian history that greatly impacted the morale of Soliman’s generation. Soliman rarely dated or signed his paintings, often choosing to work on a single canvas over many years, if not decades.

Soliman graduated from Cairo’s School of Fine Arts in 1951 and held a residency at the state-administered Luxor Atelier from 1952 to 1953, later studying at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan. He worked as an arts editor and writer for the periodicals Al-Majalla and Al-Katib, and in 1968 co-founded the avant-garde journal Galerie 68. He exhibited in the second, third, and fourth Alexandria Biennales between 1957 to 1961 and participated in the United Arab Republic pavilion at the 1966 Venice Biennale.

Self Portrait, 1950

Self Portrait in Paris, 1955

Self Portrait in His Studio, 1942

Doria Shafik, 1950

Sherihan, 1976

Omar El Sharif, 1950

Prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag

10 x 13.5 in each

Courtesy of the Rare Books and Special Collections Library, The American University of Cairo

 

Born Levon Boyadjian in present-day Turkey but of Armenian origin, Van Leo (b. 1921, Ceyhan, Turkiye – d. 2002, Cairo, Egypt) moved to Egypt with his family as a young child and took up the name Van Leo when he launched his career as photographer, ultimately making the most significant contribution to modern Egyptian art in the medium of photography. Through his practice of studio-based photography, Van Leo’s most artistically liberated photographs were those he made of himself dressed in various costumes, presenting different characters and personas, both male and female. Those images, of which about 400 survive today, would have arguably been ahead of their time. Most of those photographs were burned by Van Leo in his later years out of fear of a critical public backlash.

Van Leo’s parallel practices of self-portraiture and studio portraits of society figures, celebrities, and travellers passing through Egypt were all made using lighting techniques borrowed from cinema. His style directly referenced the glamour of Hollywood movies and their celebrities, which had been popular in Egyptian cinemas since the early 1930s, as well as the burgeoning cinema industry of modern Egypt, which was producing young stars such as actor Omar El Sharif.

The works featured here are drawn from the Van Leo Photographic Collection at the American University in Cairo’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library, to which he donated his entire archive in 1998. This included approximately 13,000 negatives and 12,000 prints. They contain his portraits of feminist writer Doria Shafik, actor Omar El Sharif, and child actress Sherihan, alongside three self-portraits, made in his studio and in Paris. They show the breadth of his interests and assorted genres of photos he made, although all are identifiable as uniquely Van Leo in style.

Van Leo attended the American University in Cairo in 1939–1940 before withdrawing to pursue photography full-time. In 2000, he received the Prince Claus Award, the first ever given to a photographer. He has been exhibited widely internationally, including at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; New Museum, New York; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; and Brighton Photo Biennial, among others.

Untitled (Don Quixote), 1961

Oil on panel

47.2 x 35.2 in

Courtesy of the collection of Mr. Rashid Kamel

 

Seif Wanly (1906 – 1979, Alexandria, Egypt) was a key figure in the development of modern art in Alexandria, working closely with his brother Adham to introduce new European approaches to Egyptian painting. His early experiments drew on Cubist and Futurist ideas, particularly in his use of simplified forms, angular structures, and dynamic compositions. Over time, his paintings became increasingly expansive and expressive, with vivid color and a freer handling of the picture plane bringing his work into dialogue with Fauvism. Adham’s death in 1959 marked a significant emotional turning point, after which Seif’s palette became noticeably more subdued and somber.

Untitled (Don Quixote) reflects Wanly’s longtime interest in the performing arts and the various international theater troupes, ballet companies, and other forms of live performance that were staged in the Alexandria Opera House during a lengthy period of cultural exchange between Egypt and the Soviet Union. Over many years, Wanly assiduously portrayed these great performers in vibrant colors and sometimes with much levity, with the paintings emphasizing vivid movement and rhythm. Untitled (Don Quixote) portrays semi-abstracted performers in darker shades of reds, greens, blacks, and greys than the usual brighter shades of blues, yellows, and reds he often used when depicting performances, yet it is one of his best works from this extensive series highlighting his mastery of Fauvist and Cubist technique and style.

Wanly worked primarily in Alexandria, where he established a studio with Adham and later taught painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts. He received First Prize at the Alexandria Biennale for Mediterranean Countries in 1959 and the Egyptian State Merit Award in 1973. His work is in major collections including the Museum of Egyptian Modern Art in Cairo, Mathaf in Doha, and the Seif and Adham Wanly Museum in Alexandria.