“Bank robbery is an initiative of amateurs. True professionals establish a bank.” Bertolt Brecht’s phrase is the conducting line to reflect on the Lebanese situation at the moment. In the year 2022, the country’s situation is on the brink of collapse, having already resulted in more than 20 bank heists across the nation. Through assembling interviews with depositors Sally Hafiz, Bassam El-Sheikh, Abdallah El-Saii, and critical theorist Nadia Bou Ali, along with extensive image research and TV material, the project aims to explore and make sense of the surreal circumstances that have taken hold.
The multi-format project explores the ongoing aftermath of the 2019 financial crisis, how violence is a fundamental part of the system we live in, and how historical corruption has led to the absence of the state and its substitution by the NGOs in all services.

Opening night, on Tuesday, January 9th at 7 PM at Medrar
The exhibition is open on January 10th and 11th from 4 – 9 PM

About, from and to Palestine

Missile, Parties, Occupation, Nation, Internal Affairs, Hamas, Front, Escalation, Gaza, Locations, border strip, dust, Al Qassam, Haifa, confrontations, rubble, liberation, clashes, Retreat, Israel, fusion, retrieval, Al-Aqsa, camp, crossing, Al-Shifa, map, bursts, Conviction, Sector, Martyrs, Shelling, Cannons, Olive District, North, Fire, Incursion Tel Aviv, alliance, safe passage, raids, plaza, dust, explosion, banner Jenin, fighters, tanks, Jabalia, Phosphor, dead, aircraft, soldiers, water, march wounded, injured, rebellion, Al-Guds, damage, bombs, smoke, Al-Zaytoun, children,West bank, artillery, Enemy, Pieces, Destruction, Warning, Yarmouk, Rubble, Rafah, Family, Fall, Breaking, Tunnels, Demonstrations, Attack, Warning, Siege, Al-Shgaeiaa, Cover, Palestine, Rulers, evacuation, intensifying, white flag, blood, Zionists, weapon, appeals, America, targeting, Hospital, force, inland, Resistance, War, Civilians, Infiltration, Salah El-din, Aggression, hostages, massacres, freedom, displacement, fuel, Khan Younis, missing, factions.

“Missile” is a group exhibition held at Medrar, featuring the artworks of several artists and designers who want to show their solidarity with occupied Palestine. A percentage of the exhibition’s income will be returned as a symbolic contribution to the victims of the aggression in Gaza.

Artists: 

• Ahmed Mohamed Hussein
• Ahmed Zidan
• Ahmed Badr
• Amir Abdelghani
• Osama Ehab
• Ahmed Tawfiq
• Ahmed Yazzer
• Amira Khalil
• Ehab Ehab
• Engy Mohsen
• Mohamed Abdelkreem 
• Soukina Goal
• Bashier Asalieh
• Bahman Eslami
• Gian Spina
• George Deeb
• Ganzeer
• Khaled Al-Wakil
• Rania Ezzat
• Rodeina Fouad
• Abdool
• Omar Gabr
• Abdelrahman Allam
• Ali Zarey
• Kinda Ghannom
• Muhammad Elmahdy
• Mariem Abutaleb
• Mohamed El- Maghraby
• Marwan Sabra
• Mostafa Saifoon
• Mona Essam El-Din
• Mona Khaliel
• Shaimaa Elhussieny
• Hani Rashed
• Hager Elsayed
• Heba Tarek
• Huda Lutfi
• Yarrah Yasser
• Youmna Noah

Special thanks to artist Rania Ezzat for contributing to the exhibition’s idea.

Phase 2 – The Production Lab: 

The Research Lab led up to the Production Lab which took place during July and August where the participants developed their XR projects with the support of the mentors and the techies team provided by Medrar. The participating artists were Agnes Michalczyk, Farida Serageldin, who both participated in the Research phase, and Zeyad Aboughaly, Ahmed Nader, Joseph Adel and Amr Ali. 

The Production Lab will be followed by an exhibition of the produced XR artworks, held at Medrar for Contemporary Art in Cairo. 

The exhibition opens on Sunday, September 3rd at 7 PM and continues until September 17th.

The exhibition is open daily from 4 to 9 PM.

*This project falls under Medrar’s recently launched MedRX -XR Portal umbrella project, a long-term program that champions the creation of counter-narratives that reimagine our world and alter our understanding of global and local matters. It strives to bridge the gap between alternative artistic research and production by facilitating and developing labs, workshops, exchanges, lectures, exhibitions, and events. It is open to all artists, cultural practitioners, and creators from different disciplines interested in enriching their artistic practices by experimenting with cutting-edge technologies and reflecting on what possibilities emerge from this intersection.

Extended Ecologies Exhibition Publication

A digital installation by Amr ElKafrawy and Jean-François Robin, music by Emilie Roby.

Directed by artists Amr Elkafrawy and Jean-François Robin, Memories of the Future is a work that unfolds a dreamlike and poetic environment which deploys itself throughout five chapters of computer-generated videos as well as a series of sculptures. By approaching the future as if it was already past, this artwork suggests a new take on the imaginary of the future in the hope of taming our own faculty of temporal intervention.

*The exhibition opens on December 1, 2022, at 8 P.M.
The exhibtion is open daily, except Friday, from 1 to 10 P.M. until December 22, 2022.

Medrar is pleased to invite you to the second exhibition by MEDRX:
Fantomas is a virtual reality art exhibition; where the audience can use VR headsets to experience the immersive projects created by the participants in Fantomas Lab.
Fantomas Lab was held under the supervision of artists Jean François Robin and Maha Maamoun, with the contribution of the guests: Nadim Choufi, Assem Hendawi and HUNITI GOLDOX; and the technical support from 412 labs.
Seven participants were selected through Fantomas open call. The participants are: Fahed Sayej, Hafez Hamdallah, Sara Ayman, Ahmed Aiuby, Mena Safwat, Amr Ali and Tlön.

The exhibition hosts side events; Fantomas Talks: VR Practices in Ramallah, on December 2, 7 P.M.; No Borders – Audiovisual Performances, on December 3, 7 P.M; and the release of Fantomas publication during Cairo Art Book Fair, from 8 to 10 December.

Address: 10 Gamal Al Din Abou El Mahasen, 8th floor, Garden City

Fantomas Exhibition Publication

 VIORAMA EXHIBITION 

 VR art projects 

Opening 8 May 2022 at 7 pm 

Running daily except Fridays from 8 to 21 May from 1 to 9 pm at Medrar’s new space 

Medrar’s new address: 10 Gamal Al Din Abou Al Mahasen, Garden City, 8th floor

Medrar is happy to invite you to the opening of the first exhibition of the MEDRX program: the VIORAMA exhibition. You will finally have the opportunity to walk through the installations and room-scale VR and experience through VR headsets the immersive projects created by the participants throughout the VIORAMA lab. 

Viorama is a Virtual reality (VR) Lab and Exhibition aimed for artists to explore through lectures and hands-on activities the potential of VR audiovisual tools in relation to their arts practises, reflect on concepts of VR and new formats of narration, and prototype and implement VR-based projects to be showcased in an immersive exhibition. The Viorama Lab was led by Dutch instructor Daniel Ernst with the contribution of guest speakers Morehshin Allahyar, Jesse Cumming, George Zakaria and Ahmed Sabbour, alongside the technical support of Karim Ehab and Youssef Abusamra from 412labs.  

Dioramas have a longstanding tradition in museums, where they depict all kinds of spectacular and often impossible scenes. If you visit the museum a week from now, that exact same moment of the diorama will be there for you to visit. The gazelle would still be eaten by the lion and the dinosaur is still sinking into a tarpit. They are moments stuck in time like a mosquito caught in ember.

The most important aspect of Virtual Reality is presence. Presence in this sense encompasses both the physical and mental occupation of a virtual space. The more presence a VR experience provides, the more a player can disconnect himself from the real world to accept the virtual actuality as a new reality. But this takes time. Time that dioramas have plenty of.

Unlike “real” dioramas, VR dioramas allow you to step past the restrictive glass and into the scene. You can experience the emotion that is depicted, without experiencing the pressure of a linear story that is barreling to its conclusion. You are there and you have all the time in this world to cross into this new reality. The only thing you have to do is be somewhere else.

Following an open call, 6 participants were selected -Malak Yacout, Ahmed Nader, Mohamed Maghraby, Dina Jereidini, Zeiad Aboghali and Aya Tarek. Throughout the 6 weeks, the Viorama Lab participants got the chance to work on their dioramas based on a distinct and personal moment. They were handed tools and techniques to create a finished VR diorama from the early inception of an idea to a fully working interactive VR experience. The topics discussed include thumbnailing, greyboxing, animation & interaction design, audio and music, post processing, and narrative design. 

Visual identity and graphic design: Lana Kurdi

*This program falls under Medrar for Contemporary Art’s newly launched MedRX, an umbrella project consisting of a series of activities (workshops,  labs, exhibitions, screenings, meet-up sessions etc) aiming at building a bridge between artists and XR technologies. 

Guideposts 
 10 Feb – 10 March 2022 

10 Feb – 10 March 2022
Daily from 1 to 9 pm (Fridays closed)
Opening 10 February at 7 pm

Medrar is pleased to present Guideposts, a solo exhibition by Bassem Yousri investigating the form and function of structures born of a culture of improvised troubleshooting in a shifting cityscape. The show takes its cues from the creative pragmatism that has created the trademark vernacular aesthetic that permeates public space in Cairo. The works are a continuation of Yousri’s ongoing project, Guideposts, in which the artist investigates what he terms the “institutional aesthetic” — a slapdash approach to problem solving that he first noted in government buildings, but which is also prevalent in public spaces.

Characterised by visual clutter, provisional assemblages, and a hybridity that suggests new meanings for commonplace objects, the prevalence of this vernacular aesthetic is a physical manifestation of an infrastructural vacuum. In this space of potentialities, new strategies of versatile problem-solving emerge, highlighting an acute awareness of temporality and a mistrust of anything but the lived present. The exhibited artworks by Yousri respond, in various ways, to this state, edifying structures that give tangible form to strategies of self-reliance in an amorphous and evolving urban space, and to the forms of social interaction they inadvertently create. 

Appearing at first as an incoherent mishmash of materials, Yousri’s playful, mixed-media wall sculptures retain a functionality that bypasses conventional notions of urban planning and utilitarian design. Their lopsided grids of pipes, bulbs and wires display a disregard for a streamlined form, presenting instead a visual randomness that is purposefully constructed to circumvent a specific material reality. A state of excess characterises the works, intentionally creating a sensory overload that foregrounds conflicting claims over public space.

Yousri combines his sculptures with absurd textual injunctions and interactive elements to present a tongue-in-cheek probe into the existing authority of artwork over spectator. In doing so, the artist also questions the dissonance between the demands of institutional authority and the hybrid, inconsistent facade through which they are communicated. 

The show takes place in parallel to a complementary dual artist exhibition titled How to Build a City with Two Nails and a Wire in which a selection of Bassem Yousri’s sculptures are placed in dialogue with drawings and sculptures by Ahmed Badry, taking place in Gypsum Gallery. Badry’s exhibited works continue his speculation on non-functional objects through drawings and mock-ups for seemingly unbuildable, but existent homes. The artworks propose whimsical plans for an inherently unplanned phenomenon, referencing the politics of informal housing. The Gypsum exhibition runs from 17 February till 31 March 2022.

This project was realised thanks to a grant from The Culture Resource (Al Mawred Al Thaqafi) and to technical support provided by ADEF (Arab Digital Expression Foundation). The exhibition is organised and hosted by Medrar for Contemporary Art in collaboration with Gypsum Gallery.

SIDE EVENTS 

PANEL DISCUSSION WITH OMAR NAGATI AND AHMED ZAAZAA

March 1 from 6 – 8 pm at Medrar 

An accompanying panel discussion between architect and urban planner Omar Nagati (CLUSTER) and urban researcher and designer Ahmed Zaazaa (10 Tooba, Madd, Megawra) moderated by Gypsum Co-Director Lara El Gibaly will take place at Medrar on March 1 from 6 – 8 pm. The speakers will expound on the implications of the vernacular aesthetic to which the artworks respond to our lived experience of the city.

ARTIST TALK WITH BASSEM YOUSRI 

March 21 at 7 pm at Medrar 

VR Screenings
Dates: 22nd, 23rd, and 24th January 2022 – from 1pm to 6pm
Location: Medrar
In line with our interest in digital art form and the possibilities of virtual reality, we are happy to announce a new addition to our event series anticipating our upcoming XR program. Medrar is going to screen two groundbreaking VR films by Emmy award winning artist Yasmin Elayat on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th of January 2022. The first film is the 1st episode of The Changing Same (2021). The Changing Same (12 minutes) is an immersive, episodic virtual reality experience where participants travel through time and space to witness the connected historical experiences of racial injustice in the United States. A haunting story infused with magical realism and afrofuturism, The Changing Same examines the uninterrupted cycle of the history of racial oppression, past and present. Episode 1 premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. The second film is Zero Days VR which was produced in 2017. Zero Days VR (21 minutes) is an EMMY award-winning immersive documentary that explores the next chapter of modern warfare through the true story of Stuxnet: the first cyber weapon in the world known to cause real-world physical damage. The story places audiences in the invisible world of computer viruses. Based on the Participant Media feature-length documentary Zero Days, Zero Days VR made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2017 and available on Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Gear VR and Within and Steam.

Due to limited capacity, reservation is necessary. Please fill in the following form to book your spot.

The techQualia exhibition presents 15* artworks by 14* artists collectivelyreflecting on, experimenting with and appropriating AI technologies,generative coding, AR, VR and XR within their artistic practice. Focusing on local and regional artists and artworks, the exhibition showcases audio-visual installations, generative prints, paintings,code-generated music, AI-enabled performance pieces and more.

Medrar participated in the exhibition by displaying a project that was produced in the frame work of Viorama lab, which was displayed in medrar alongside 5 other projects.

by Malak Yacout

Sketch for a collective dream experience  

This experiment for a forthcoming dream / memory game reshuffles abstracted collective memories relating to wheat and the political and economic negotiations. Thus various permutations of collected dream dioramas are generated, all featuring a struggle between a fear of loneliness and a threatening loss of individual identity as a result of assimilation. Here only one such variation is exhibited.

Essentially, this is an adaptation of dream mechanisms that questions dichotomies that frequently associate sleep and dreaming with passive escape, in opposition to wakefulness-action-militancy. As opposed to the Surrealists of the early 20th century, and the many similar ventures that followed, this game does not seek simply to imitate the strange aesthetics and iconography of dreams. Nor does it seek to find symbolic meaning in dreams through dream interpretation. Instead, this experiment for a future game is an endless struggle to remember dreams, however frustratingly ephemeral the experience, or intangible its traces.

 From 21 to 24 December 2021 and from 9 to 20 January 2022 

 daily 1 to 9 pm (Friday 14th closed) 

 Opening: Tuesday 21 December, 6 to 10 pm 

Following 3 intensive workshops of experimentation with painting and collage, “Naema’s Office is Bleeding 4” exhibition will showcase the abundant production of artworks created by the participants. The 3 workshops, which took place over the month of December at Medrar, were led by esteemed artist hany Rashed and co-facilitated by Mona Essam Eddin. 

The workshops accompanied around 70 participants from different backgrounds, fields and ages in the explorative process of the creative potential of collage and painting.

Spanning aspiring creative artists to emerging and mid-career artists, their creations  draw  from a diversity of traditional and contemporary sources such as photography, paintings, drawings, magazines and internet imagery.  

The participants had the opportunity to share their experiences and feedback with their peers and engaged in discussions related to the local and international contemporary art scene, curation and artistic creation with the invited visitors and guest speakers. 

All the artworks showcased are for sale at the nominal price of 400 EGP. 

Very special thanks to our guest speakers: Shady El Noshokaty, Huda Lotfi, Ibrahim Ahmed, Mohamed Abla, Karim El Hayawan and Picasso.  

The exhibition will run daily at Medrar from 1 to 9 pm from Tuesday, 21 December to Friday 24 December and resume from 9 to 20 January 2022 (Friday 14th closed).