Open Call – Open Studio Program 2026 – 2nd Edition 

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Imagination and Resilience – 1 September – 26 November 2026

Deadline for applications: 11 August 2026

Applications should be submitted through the following link: https://forms.gle/wScw3GpVYB6zk5USA

Results announced: 18 August 2026

A project by Ismail Fayed in partnership with Medrar and ARD Art Institution as part of Roznama 10 – Studio Program’s parallel tracks.  

About the Program

Following the success of its first edition “This is Not a Landscape” at Medrar, the Open Studio Program returns for a second edition as part of Roznama 10 – Studio Program’s parallel tracks, in partnership with ARD Art Institution. The parallel tracks of Roznama 10 take different formats, including workshops and seminars led by invited guests, some of which are offered through open calls, in a shared commitment to artistic research, dialogue, and sharing artistic processes.

At a moment when resources — material, institutional, and imaginative — are increasingly under strain, we believe that sharing resources and practice is not a luxury but a necessity. The Open Studio Program is built on the premise that artists need time and space to reflect and exchange with their peers and with an engaged public.

Over twelve weeks, 8 to 10 emerging and mid-career artists will develop individual projects in an open studio setting, supported by mentorship and guidance from artists and curators, curatorial support, and dialogue with a community of fellow practitioners. The program deliberately steps outside the more formal register of the exhibition, offering artists a chance to think out loud, test ideas in progress, and meet audiences in a more open context.

This Edition’s Theme: Imagination and Resilience

This edition asks a difficult question: what kind of imagination is possible right now?

We are living through regional conflicts and wars, an increasingly distorted global economy shaped by the monopolies of tech and fossil fuel industries, the accelerating threat of automation and artificial intelligence, and a still-unfolding climate crisis. Within this landscape, what forms of resilience remain available to us as artists, and as subjects?

The program starts from the conviction that imagination is not separate from these conditions but a precondition for resisting and enacting resilience. Resilience, here, is not a single heroic act but a daily and difficult practice — the choices, strategies, and small interventions through which we sustain ourselves and continue to project a different world, even under punishing conditions.

This edition of the Open Studio Program is an invitation — to artists and audiences alike — to reclaim the possibility of imagining, and the ways that we are still capable of it.

We welcome proposals that engage with this theme from any angle, medium, or methodology.

How the Program Works

Duration: 12 weeks of studio-based work, running within the 1 September – 26 November 2026 program window, using the technical facilities and resources of Medrar and ARD Art Institution.

Curatorial support: Participating artists will work in close dialogue with curator Ismail Fayed, the Medrar and ARD Art Institution teams, and invited guest curators and artists throughout the process including Marwan Fayed, Azza Ezzat, Malak Yacout, and Georgina Sleap.

Peer exchange: Artists are expected to engage actively with one another — sharing feedback, insight, and critique as part of a working community, not a cohort of isolated practices.

Biweekly sessions: Every two weeks, an invited artist or practitioner will lead a session responding to the group’s ongoing work, offering critical feedback and support.

Public moments: Each biweekly session is followed by an open, informal public moment — not a presentation, but a relaxed conversation in which audiences are invited to engage directly with artists about their work in progress.

Closing presentation and feedback: At the end of the twelve weeks, artists will share their work publicly, followed by a final collective feedback session for participants to reflect on both their individual projects and the experience of working within this shared space.

What the Program Provides

  • Access to Medrar and ARD Art Institution’s technical facilities and support for the duration of the program
  • Sustained curatorial mentorship from Ismail Fayed and the Medrar/ARD Art Institution teams, with additional input from invited curators and guest artists
  • A structured framework for peer critique and exchange with 7–9 other participating artists
  • Regular public engagement opportunities in an informal, dialogue-based format
  • A closing public presentation and structured feedback session

Please note that the program is offered free of charge. It does not provide funding for production, materials, or other costs artists may incur in developing their projects. Applicants should plan accordingly.

Who Can Apply

We invite applications from emerging and mid-career artists, working in any medium or discipline, with a particular emphasis on opportunities for emerging practitioners. We are looking for artists who:

  • Have a developing project they wish to advance — not necessarily a finished proposal, but a clear starting point
  • Are drawn to the theme of Imagination and Resilience and want to think through it in the company of others
  • Are willing and able to commit fully to the eight-week structure, including the biweekly sessions and public moments

Commitment

Because the program depends on sustained group process and continuity of feedback, participation requires a firm commitment to attend all sessions. Missing more than one session over the course of the program will be grounds for disqualification. We ask applicants to consider this commitment seriously before applying.

How to Apply

Interested artists should submit:

  • A brief project proposal or statement of intent — 250 words max
  • A portfolio or samples of previous work — pdf/ppt/..etc
  • A short CV or bio

Deadline for applications: 11 August 2026

Applications may be submitted in either English or Arabic.

For questions about the program, please contact: roznama@medrar.org

The program is facilitated and led by Ismail Fayed, a writer, critic, and curator based in Cairo. Since 2007, he has been writing on contemporary artistic and cultural practices in Egypt. He has contributed to major regional and international publications and collaborated with leading art institutions worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, ArteEast, HKW (Berlin), KFD, and CCA Lagos, among others.

Guests: Marwan Fayed (Architect, Artist and Trainer), Azza Ezzat (Visual Artist), Malak Yacout (Visual Artist), Georgina Sleap (Visual Artist)al Artist), Malak Yacout

Exhibition – This Is Not A Landscape: An Open Studio

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We announce “Exhibition—This Is Not A Landscape: An Open Studio.”

This Is Not A Landscape is a continuation of a process that was started by artist Azza Ezzat in 2018, after she was commissioned to draw a typical landscape sketch, only to realize that every time she tried to sketch out the urban landscape around her, something in the built environment kept constantly changing challenging any notion of a landscape or solid structure that could be rendered to a one-dimensional surface. This instability and complexity of the urban landscape have been a constant feature of Egypt’s modernization as construction over the past two hundred years has been characterized by sudden ruptures or spontaneous acts of informality. Yet what makes the contemporary reality of the city more challenging was the degree of transformation of the built environment to a degree not seen since the Napoleonic Campaign and the reimagining of Egypt and also Cairo as a city. The destabilising forces of development and expansion, that move according to an accelerated and completely centralized pace, meant that the city was being destroyed and rebuilt faster than what anyone can expect or imagine.

Against this backdrop, Azza wanted to expand the process that started as an attempt to capture something that can’t be captured on a flat surface, to a collaborative process where she thinks along with other artists about the ways in which the city has been violently setting and resetting conditions of livability, daily work and movement, but a fundamental sense of self that is constantly assaulted by acts of destruction and reconstruction that appear random as they are disruptive.

The format developed by Azza and Ismail Fayed, is an open studio program that invites artists and audience to think together about the different strategies of developing the work, but also in understanding the potential that lies behind each project. In this group showcase of different work-in-progress projects, and in partnership with Medrar, Azza, Mariam, Amira, Farah, Farah, Luz, Dalila, Mona and Ibrahim have engaged in a continuous dialogue about possibilities of understanding those transformations, moving from the private to the public, the domestic to the urban, the center to the periphery, from infrastructure to superstructure, and from the position of the inhabitant to one of the outsider. Each artist developed a project that stemmed from a practice embedded in questions about experience and memory, and the way the city influences our notions of space and identity.

Through a program of invited guests and facilitators, including artists Helena Abdel Nasser, Yasmine El Meleegy, urban researcher Ahmed Borham, digital fabricator Eslam Ali and with support from ADEF, the artists got to experiment with different approaches and methodologies in exploring space and materials and expanding a vocabulary of research and framing but also methods of practice that helped the artists expand possibilities of production beyond their own medium and form.

This was accompanied by public moments where the audience was invited to join throughout the program, giving feedback, and reflecting with the artists on their different propositions and experiments.

For the showcase the artists chose different iterations of the work, to share with the public, but also are inviting the public to extend this dialogue and think together, in a moment fraught with great uncertainty and catastrophic change, what kind of landscape can we imagine? And how can we inhabit it?

Opening Tuesday, 22nd of July 2025, at 7 PM, running until Tuesday, 29th of July 2025, from 4 to 9 PM, except Friday and Saturday.

Address: Medrar, 10 Gamal Eldin Abo ElMahsen, 8th floor, Garden City, Cairo.

“The City” – Open Studio by Mohamed Abo Gabal

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We announce “The City” is an ongoing research project by Mohamed Abo Gabal, initiated in 2024, reflecting on how cities across the Middle East shift, expand, and contract under the pressure of political, economic, and institutional decisions. The work follows the city not as a fixed place, but as a space in flux, where transformation happens gradually or abruptly, deliberately or unintentionally. These shifts are often shaped by agendas that remain unclear or unacknowledged.

The project approaches urban space as a site where memory, power, and belonging are constantly negotiated. Who remains, what is removed, and how the past is referenced or erased are questions that run throughout the work. These decisions often bypass those most familiar with the space—residents, workers, and others whose presence rarely enters official narratives. It takes shape through research, movement, and close observation. It doesn’t aim to capture a singular image of urban life, but instead follows what is being rearranged, redefined, or slowly withdrawn. Small details such as altered building facades, renamed streets, or empty lots become entry points into broader conversations about space, displacement, and access.

Opening Sunday, 27th of April, at 6 PM, and runs until Tuesday, the 29th of April, from 4 to 9 PM 

In parallel of the open studio, “Grey Is The New Green” a discussion by Fares Zaitoon on Sunday, 27th of April, at 7 PM

and “Counter Narrative to the Urban Transformations of Cairo: a discussion by Ahmed Zaazaa on Monday, 28th of April, at 8 PM.

Address: Medrar, 10 Gamal Eldin Abo ElMahsen, 8th floor, Garden City, Cairo.