Visual Arts Competition & Exhibition from Egypt 

Medrar, Contemporary Image Collective (CIC) 

From 11 March  to 8 April 2021

Opening: Thursday, 11 March 2021, from 2 to 10 pm.

Opening times: daily from 1 to 9 pm. Fridays closed. 

Roznama 8th exhibition presents 34 artworks selected from over 500 applicants by a newly-appointed jury of established professional Egyptian artists and clears the way for international artist mobility and inter-cultural artistic collaborations through offering varying awards, such as art residencies grants and cash prizes to outstanding artists. The works are exhibited at Medrar for Contemporary Art and Contemporary Image Collective (CIC).

Organized by Medrar for Contemporary Art, Roznama is a competition and exhibition for contemporary visual art that encourages the breaking of popular and academic boundaries in established arts to experimental and novel media arts practices. It harbours the full spectrum of visual art forms, including the relatively traditional, avant-garde and everything in between, ranging from photography, moving images, painting, installations to digital art and mixed media creations by Egyptian artists under the age of 35. 

Through its 8 editions, Roznama’s purpose has been to support and nurture the growth of new young artists, further enable their technical capabilities, and exhibit their works in the creative industry sphere.

 Prizes:

•  Muhammad Salah, Art Residency for up to 2 months in the Netherlands provided by the Embassy of the Netherlands*
• Castell Lanko, Art Residency for 3 months at Cité internationale des Arts provided by the French Institute**
• Eman Hussein, Research trip for 1 month in Switzerland provided by Pro Helvetia Cairo – Swiss Arts Council***
• Rania Atef, 20,000 EGP cash prize provided by the British Council. 
• Abdulkassem Salama, Language scholarship in an acknowledged institution in Egypt for the equivalent of up to 30,000 EGP provided by Ubuntu Art Gallery.
• Malak Yacout, 10,000 EGP cash prize provided by Gypsum Gallery. 
• Sara Salem, 5,000 EGP cash prize provided by Peacock for Art. 
• Shatha Al-Deghady, 5,000 EGP cash prize provided by Artist Hany Rashed.
• Ali Zaraay, 5,000 EGP cash prize provided by Art D’Égypte.
• Eslam Abd el salam, Prize provided by Contemporary Image Collective (CIC)****

*The Residency includes flight tickets, accommodation, production fees, and per diems. The residency will be made available in accordance with Covid-19 travel restrictions up to February 2022. 

**The Residency includes all logistical expenses, such as, flight tickets, accommodation and studio facilities in addition to per-diems.

**The Residency includes all logistical expenses, such as flight tickets, accommodation and studio facilities in addition to per diems.

****The CIC Prize consists of the use of our production facilities for the equivalent of 3000 EGP. Our production facilities include our silk screen printing workspaces, as well as the CIC Photolab which offers digital museum quality ink-jet printing, analog film developing, scanning and monitor calibration.

Curated by: Narimane Abouelseoud

Project Manager: Victoria Cornacchia 

Project coordinator: Zahraa Elalfy

Translation: Ahmed Hoza, Fatma Elzahraa, Khadijah Bracken

Copy editing: Mahmoud Atef

Graphic Designer: Engy Mohsen

Please make sure to keep your masks on during your visit. 

 Exhibition venues 

Medrar for Contemporary Art: 7 Gamal El Din Abou El Mahasen St, Garden City, Cairo

Contemporary Image Collective (CIC):  27 Talaat Harb, Downtown, Cairo.

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Jury Statment 

Amr Elkafrawy

What struck me most in Roznama’s edition this year, with the chosen artworks in mind, was the balanced diversity of the artistic mediums. The artists’ choice of mediums felt natural and suitable for each artwork. 

The liberty with which the artists chose their mediums further served their artworks. In most artworks, the mediums are not strongly present as they fade away in favour of the artistic concept. This bothersome dispute over artistic mediums is no longer of any significance or value. Artists have got over the idea of defining “contemporary” works based on their mediums. 

Another remarkable feature of this edition -not necessarily a positive or negative one- is the absence of issues that were long addressed during earlier periods. Subjects such as the revolution, gender, oppression or any similar topic had little to no presence in the artworks. 

Most artworks were concerned with self-expression itself. Taking casual and personal matters, sometimes the quarantine and alienation, as a facade behind which hides the search process, or taking visual forms as a counterpart to try to identify one-self in the artwork. 

Hassan Khan

I am here to make judgements- that is what a jury is. Primarily. There are no absolute standards  in “art”, it is a discussion and, always, a reflection of some sort of vision, of ideology, of wants. My job is to try to be true to my own vision and to make judgements, even if it is true that I have arguments, that I remain critical and ideologically opposed to judgement based on what is known as “taste”. I  am happy though. I am happy that this is an open call. A cross-section of ideas about art in this land we call “Egypt”. I was first, in an intensely personal way, shocked to find that some of the deepest and most tenacious problems of the 90s are still very much present.. Entrenched.  Refusing to let go. On a more positive note I was surprised to find that artists are more flexible and irreverent with mediums and forms. The obsession with new technologies for their own sake as signifiers of contemporaneity seems to be, thankfully, on the wane. However the dominance of the image of the artist – the artist as savior, the artist as tormented soul, the artist as revealer of truths is still incredibly powerful and  in my opinion remains a serious obstacle to the emergence of a vibrant, diverse, and generative scene. There is more though that is worthy of attention. A lot of work is intentionally less polished – the violence latent in the superstructure is visible. Collages are  rough and inhabited by charged gestures. Artists seem more comfortable to allow the eerie nature of images space to speak and breathe without necessarily having to explain them. Digital and virtual works explore new terrain while avoiding  a slide into tired one dimensional moralism. There is  sophisticated and aware sensitivity to class and its manifestations, the positions through which we speak, to power and to the context we  cohabit. 

We meet, we discuss, we give prizes as we’re supposed to, but I remain absolutely convinced that most important is the fact of the actual work. 

Huda Lutfi

In reviewing the application forms for Roznama 8, I noticed that many of the young applicants did not seem to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the work they were presenting, it was undeveloped, flighty and shallow. Their conceptual statements, which they often deflected, demonstrate that they did not put much effort into thinking about their work. A state of affairs such as this points to the limitations of their educational training and their lack of artistic interest. Such a situation poses question marks with regards to the flaws of our schooling system and more specifically the kind of teaching they receive in art academies in Egypt.

From a personal perspective, I couldn’t help pondering over the numerous works I came across revealing signs of depression, anxiety and fear among the young applicants, which once again calls for our concern.

The artists who excited my attention were those who fleshed out an idea that brought focus to their work and echoed their lived experience. In the process of translating their ideas into some visual form, they did well in going for the appropriate medium to use.  A few of the artists showed a sense of criticality, interrogating the process of art making, its changing contexts and the ways in which it engages an audience. 

As one of the 3 jurists, I am pleased to say that from among the 500 applicants, we agreed on the selection of 34 artists to participate in Roznama 8, which is more than we had anticipated for this competition. To further develop their ideas, the chosen artists were offered the opportunity to work for a short time with a curator. 

On March 13th I went to see the artists’ works at the gallery spaces of Medrar and the Contemporary Image Collective in Downtown Cairo. Even though the artists were given a short time to finalize their pieces, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much progress some of them made in translating their ideas. Recognizing their weakest point, curator Abou Elseoud labored with a number of the selected artists to help them elaborate and refine their conceptual starting points. Medrar’s team thankfully provided the needed production materials and the spaces for the young artists so that their work can be appropriately shown during Roznama’s 8th annual event.

Creative Impact Lab Cairo (2021) 

Creative Impact Lab Cairo is a five-week online creative exchange convened with 18 Egypt-based artists and led by interdisciplinary artist Katherine Behar.

You can still see all the artworks that took part in the Creative Impact Lab Cairo (2021) on the lab’s website: https://cil.medrar.org/

An online exhibition addressing women’s empowerment through community-driven digital and new media art works-in-progress.

Recto & Verso showcases works-in-progress created during Creative Impact Lab Cairo’s workshop and project development intensive.

The diverse works in the exhibition collectively express the multifaceted complexities of women’s empowerment in Egypt. “Recto and verso” is a Latin phrase used by book designers to indicate the front and back sides of a page. In the “old media” pages of a book, the physical form of the paper page ensures that there is always another side. So too, in the digital artworks in this exhibition, new media forms ensure the structural impossibility of reductivity thinking—such as the notion of a single universal value system that would yield an easy resolution to these complex cultural issues. Instead, these works dwell in the complexities, demonstrating that there is always another side to the story.

Project Manager: Victoria Cornacchia

Project coordinator: Theodore Amgad 

Lab Coordinator: Rodeina Fouad

SHISH BISH 
Game-based art exhibition 

Opening: Tuesday, 16 February from 2 pm to 11 pm

The exhibition runs until 3 March from 2 to 10 pm daily except Fridays at Medrar for Contemporary Art. 

Medrar and Makouk present “Shish Bish”, a one-of-a-kind art-based game exhibition to be both enjoyed visually and played. 

Following an intensive workshop exploring the connection between games and contemporary arts, the 12 participants invite players and art lovers to come over to Medrar to discover this playful exhibition they have put together. 

Combining the languages of games and art, and drawn by the common interest in the visual, five small groups have created games that enhance the interactive aspect of art creation. 

This vibrant exhibition offers a cross-medium range of art-based digital and analog games including installations and board games and delving into the digital and virtual experience.  

Among diverse dynamic creations, a space-based game will identify different physical and conceptual trajectories for walking through the exhibition leading visitors into a playful and artsy experience. 

Head on over to play with friends and new acquaintances and find inspiration. 

 Projects 

Not a game by Engy Mohsen and Azza Ezzat 

Spinoza by Mona Essam, Nasreen Mamdouh and Nayra Moustafa 

Sea raiders by Amir Eid and Ahmed Tarek 

California bails by Helena Abdelnasser, Hazem Shaltoot and Ayah Abdeen

O star by Atef Rostom and Amira Elshaer 

Please remember to keep your masks on and use hand sanitizers during your visit. 

For health reasons, we won’t let in more than 20 people at the time. 

See you there! 

Poster design by Mohamed Sayed 

Typography by Fadi Makram Wilson

The workshop was facilitated by Ali Azmi between 29 January and 10 February at Medrar for Contemporary Art and Goethe-Institut Kairo. 

Guest speakers: Mariam Abou Ghazi and Ahmed Elshaer 

Photographers: Mohamed Helmy and Abdallah Khairy 

Coordinator: Victoria Cornacchia 

Technical manager: Theodore Amgad 

Production manager: Mazen Hussein  

Logistics assistant: Mahmoud Gamal 

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Including collaborations with
Andrea Nones-Kobiakov and Natasha Yonan
Curated by Ahmed Shawky Hassan

How can you talk about something without talking about it? According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, “what creates the power of words… is the belief in the legitimacy of words and of those who utter them…words alone cannot create this belief.” With language, the onus is on the recipient and their desire to receive and harmonize with the words from a narrator. Springing from this idea, Marwa Benhalim’s work in The Cookbook is interested in the circulation of language, its fluid capacities, while being a camouflaged-context-dependent medium.

The production of the works in the show began with Benhalim’s research on language, observing its duality as a source of strength and weakness. Informed by this dualism, Benhalim’s work negotiates a space between realism and surrealism, creating its own language. Together the works dismantle the mechanics of official television speech production and popular proverbs and idioms – specifically in relation to food and consumption.

Language as a medium in its own right, goes through a variety of conceptual and material translations in the works, from the transcription of texts and objects, to their mechanical engravement on solid surfaces. The works appropriate the tools of disseminating official texts in public spaces, such as commemorative memorial luxurious marble murals, recorded televised speeches, and finally, live broadcasting.

 

Visual Arts Competition & Exhibition from Egypt

Medrar, townhouse, Mashrabia
From 3 to 30 April, 2019
Opening Wednesday, 3 April 2019, 7 pm

Roznama is a periodical competition and exhibition for contemporary visual art by young Egyptians.

The competition’s objective is to encourage creative contemporary art works, which are different from the orthodox forms taught at art academies. This is achieved through providing a space for experimentation, research, and mixed media and multimedia production. Roznama also takes interest in traditional art forms, such as painting, sculpting, and avant-garde photography. Roznama aspires to become a platform that presents distinguished art works, introducing artists from Egypt and supporting them by all possible means.

This year, Roznama received over four hundred applications, the largest submission count to date. Out of the works, fifty six were selected to be exhibited across three primary art spaces across downtown Cairo: Medrar for Contemporary Art, Townhouse Gallery, and Mashrabia Gallery (Annex). The works selected traverse an array of mediums, themes, and concepts, resulting in an exceptionally varied exhibition. Participants are comprised of diverse backgrounds, including mid-career professional artists, students, and novices. The works on display offer a glimpse into the broad range of artistic production taking place in Cairo today.

Prizes 

Aya Elsayed Elbadwee, Artist in Residency for 3 months at Cité internationale des Arts provided by the French Institute*.

Rami Soussou, Artist in Residency in Switzerland, provided by the Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia Cairo*.

Alaa Ayman and Omnia Sabry, 10,000 EGP artists collective cash prize provided by: Amr El Kafrawy, Haitham Nawar, Hala Elkoussy, Hoda Lutfi, Osama Daoud, Shady Elnoshokaty.

Kamila Bassioni and Mayar Nayel, 10,000 EGP cash prize provided by Al Ismaelia For Real Estate Investment.

Ahmed Swilam and Moaaz El Domasy, 5,000 EGP provided by Art D’Égypte contribution of production and participation in its annual exhibition.

Engy Mohsen, Solo Exhibition at SOMA Art Gallery

Karim Farid, Photography prize provided by CiC Photolab**

Randa Megahed, 5,000 EGP cash prize provided by Artist Hany Rashed.

Amir Abd ElGhany, 2,000 EGP coupon prize provided by Alwan Stationary.

Mohamed El Gindy, A portfolio website provided by Peacock for Art

Curated by: Mohamed Allam, Mariam Elnozahy
Jury: Mohamed Shoukry, Stefania Angarano, Rana El Nemr
Project Manager: Carolina Landi
Project coordinator: Hanaa Fekry
Graphic Design: Tarek Rady

/// Exhibition venues ///

Medrar for Contemporary Art
7 Gamal El Din Abou El Mahasen St
Garden City, Cairo

Townhouse Gallery
3 Hussein Basha Al Meamari, Qasr an Nile, Cairo

Mashrabia-Annex Gallery Of Contemporary Art
15, Mahmoud Bassiouny St. Qasr El-Nil, Cairo, Egypt

Opening Wednesday, 27th February 2019 7 pm
Open daily from 3 to 9 pm. Closed Fridays.

‘The Moving Poster’, the first exhibition of animated posters in Cairo, brings together top designers and animators from all over the world. ‘Moving posters’ are a new digital form where the visual content is animated and displayed through an array of moving image technologies. The exhibited selection demonstrates the wide range of possibilities as well as the limitations of digital visuals and raises questions like: What new techniques and methods of narration can be employed? What are the defining lines between an animated poster and a film? How can this medium develop in the future? And, most importantly, what is a poster exactly?

‘The Moving Poster’ was previously shown at the Weltformat Graphic Design Festival, Switzerland – 2016 and in Typomania international Typographic Festival, Russia – 2017.

The exhibition is accompanied by 3 guest lectures and a two-day workshop.

<< Posters in Process>>
Erich Brechbühl will give an in-depth introduction to his poster design process and show some of his other recent works. By sharing different examples of his work with the public, he will demonstrate the paths and experiments he goes through to reach the final design.

<< I Like to move it>>
Josh Schaub will talk about why and how he believes everyone should animate their visual works. In his talk, Schaub will discuss the various different elements involved in working with moving posters and animated infographics including dynamic fonts and kinetic illustrations amongst other elements.
Following a brief presentation of their work, Turbo, together with the guest speakers, invites the audience to an open informal discussion around regional and international contemporary design discourses and their relation to the visual arts.

http://www.themovingposter.com

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VDU ART (though I hate the word art) 
Walid Elsawi – Solo exhibition
Opening: Monday, 3rd  September 2018, 7pm
Exhibition runs till: 30 September 2018
Open daily from 3pm until 9pm, except Fridays
  
VDU ART  (though I hate the word art) is an exhibition of video works by Walid Elsawi that posit artmaking as a self-reflexive, humorous and absurd practice. Shot in a grainy, low-tech aesthetic, the video works do not present themselves as static products, but the result of a complicit conscious act, engaged in by the artist and made overt in the content of the work. Elsawi creates videos which utilize humor and a subtle sexuality, making heavy use of irony and the artist’s own internal monologue.

 Experiments in Swiss Cinema and Moving Images 

• Opening at Medrar for Contemporary Art: Thursday 8 February, 7pm, till 15 March 2018
  Exhibition is open daily from 3pm until 9pm, except Fridays.
• Presentation by François Bovier and Adeena Mey of films by Robert Beavers & Gregory Markopoulos at Cimatheque club: 7pm, Friday 9th of February.
• Open conversation with artist Urs Breitenstein at Medrar and screening his personal work and collection of works by Werner von Mutzenbecher & André Lehmann: 7pm, Saturday 10th of February.
• Closing event with special screening of Geschichte der Nacht, (1978) in the presence of it’s director Clemens Klopfenstein at Cimatheque club: 7pm, 15th of March.

Film Implosion! is an exhibition dedicated to Swiss experimental cinema. It sheds light on a less known aspect of the country’s art history by presenting a panorama of genres and practices within the mediums of film and video from the 1960ʼs until today. Artists challenge the traditional codes of cinema through formal interventions directly on the celluloid, unconventional documentaries, political, feminist, animated, and fiction films.

Film Implosion! outlines the multiple discourses and viewpoints that surface from these filmic and para-filmic productions by offering two types of readings that echo one another. It presents audiences with different investigative directions around the artwork with the historical and critical distance provided by research, as well as an experience of the unique atmosphere of expanded cinema’s festive events in the 1960’s – a time when films were collectively projected during concerts or performances, far from the codes of classical “movie screening.”

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Pro Helvetia Cairo, Medrar for Contemporary Art presents a version of the exhibition, curated by François Bovier and Adeena Mey, which highlights comparable ways of addressing the primary structures of film in its rough form, by artists and filmmakers alike. It recalls the fundamentals of video art language that we know today, traced back to earlier expressive forms against the conventions of classical cinema. Ranging from abstract animation to collage practices and documentary mode, the featured works share a desire to deconstruct the conventions of filmic language and reinvent representation. After focusing for several years on the realm of video art, Medrar steps closer to the worlds of avant-garde and experimental film, blurring the traditional medium based distinction of moving image experimentation.

Film Implosion was first shown at Fri Art Kunsthalle (Fribourg, Switzerland) from November 2015 to February 2016, followed by a re-run at the Museum für Gestaltung (Zurich, Switzerland) in February–April 2017. The exhibition was initially curated by François Bovier and Balthazar Lovay, taking as its starting point a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and conducted by the Zurich University of the arts (with Thomas Schärer and Fred Truniger) and the University of Lausanne (with François Bovier and Adeena Mey). The first version of this exhibition intended to show the diversity and scattering of the experimental and artists’ films scenes in Switzerland.

Team

Baltazar Lovay
Gelan Hafny
Dia Hamed
Mohamed Allam
Mido Sadek

Special Thanks to

Erich Langyar
Amira El-Masry
Ors Brighstein
Patrick Signaler (Okta Films)
Dalia Sulieman
Sara Allam
Christine Serdali (Vmac)
Clemens Klopvenstein
Maged Nader
Marion Bocour
Maxa Tsolar
Marwa BenHalim
Mai Elwakil
Nahla Suleiman
Yasmine Desouki

A solo exhibition by Ahmed Elshaer
Photography, Video, Video game

Opening: Sunday 14 January, 7pm, 
Daily from 3pm until 9pm, except Fridays

Exploring hybrid spaces that have been created through strategy games which reflect the relationships between the virtual and physical world. In these spaces, you have the opportunity to explore a different world or create your own with tools available within this space.

This is how the controversy ended over how novelist Jules Verne extraordinary journeys were the end of its era, where it was said that it was no longer possible to travel to unknown places on earth. In “other spaces” man became wandering with space-time scenarios of different and unusual premise in the virtual worlds or redesigning the place with the concept of hybrid spaces in the virtual world but in reality.

The project came through walking around the sites and places that got the trait of the hybrid space with the same hypothesis and tools of these spaces in the virtual world of strategy games in which i found several points that have this particular trait.The starting point was a refugee camp in Calais, northwestern France and the site of the Atlantic Wall in Dunkirk. The first part of the project has been carried out in France and the second part in cairo.

Opening: Saturday, 9th December 2017, 7pm
Exhibition runs till: 23rd December 2017
Daily from 3 pm to 9 pm, except Friday

This exhibition presents works made by Irish artist Bryony Dunne over the past four years when she lived between Egypt and her native country. In film, photography, installation and sculpture, Dunne draws together research-driven documentary projects with her own artistic interpretations.

Dunne’s work examines the volatile relationship of man with nature, and often traces the historical links between the two countries, Ireland and Egypt, she calls home. These links are manifested in her photography and video works from Dublin’s Natural History Museum, Cairo’s Agricultural Museum and the Giza Zoo, among other sites.

During her early work in South Sinai, Dunne met a 70-year-old Bedouin woman, who lives year-round in her orchard, solo and self-sustained. One day, after weeks of repeated in-depth visits, Amriya said, “You should make a film about me and my doctors [her orchard and the mountains].” That film was made—a prologue to the other works in “Amriya”—and this solo exhibition is dedicated to her.

There will be a live performance by sound artist Asem Tag at 9pm on the opening night – Sat 9th Dec

Opening: 1 October 2017, 7pm
Exhibition runs till: 19th October 2017
Daily from 3pm until 9pm, except Friday
Address: 7 Gamal El Din Abou El Mahasen, 1st floor, Apt 4, Garden City

Inspired by epic stories, Marwan Elgamal created the animation “A Green House”. Visually influenced by Islamic manuscripts and ancient Egyptian aesthetics, as well as by contemporary movies, shows, games and comic books, his animations evoke curiosity, estrangement and nostalgia.

“A Green House” is centered around the theme of constant transformation, a transcendence without trial, a familiar meeting with things unknown. It is a pretence where the two main characters accept unfoldings, as if they are not newcomers, nothing baffles them, taking in the events with an interminable smile, everything makes sense to them when it shouldn’t. They are born as adults, they share a home where the peaks of mountains on the horizon are in hands’ reach, a confounding splitting sea is at their breakfast table. The roof of their house is given arms extended and brought together at the palms with fingers pointing upward. They are met with a vision and a delegate descends to usher them upwards, on and on, into five realms.

During this journey they come across alternate spatial points, machines and entities, where concepts have taken form, and that seem to imbue them with novel characteristics and lessons. Through the red desolate cube, the tingling blue mist of the sphere, through the lustful golden prism, in the mechanical unravelling x, through the dispersing boundless flower. They become altered with each development until they are endlessly evolved – or have not changed in the least. They are fulfilling their life goal, it is exhilarating and expected at the same time. A life where the void extending beyond their limits is another arm to grab hold of, where the farthest distance is beyond the sun or somewhere next to the living room.

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