ASMAA KHOURY
The Cairo-born Egyptian artist Asmaa Khoury graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts in 2011.
Starting in 2010, she took part in numerous group exhibitions in Egypt, among them at the Cairo Opera House and al-Ahram Art Gallery, where she was the guest of honour at three group exhibitions. She also exhibited in Dubai and in the USA.
Her solo exhibitions included those at the Gezira Art Centre in 2014, Easel and Camera gallery in 2014, Cordoba Gallery in 2017, Duroub gallery in 2018, Dai gallery in 2021, and Liwan gallery in 2022. Asmaa has won prizes in a number of contests and competitions in Egypt and internationally.
She was also selected as a jury member of Cairo Salon.
The Egyptian Modern Art Museum purchased Asmaa’s oil painting in 2017, and her works can be found in collections in Egypt, USA, England, Germany, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Tunisia, Belgium, Cyprus. Her work featured in The Guide Artists international online magazine and in the American Artwalk magazine.
CLAUDIA VON FUNCKE
Claudia von Funcke lives and works in Berlin. She studied art history, philosophy, ethnology and theatre sciences in Munich, Cologne and Augsburg before embarking on the study of sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
In her objects, installations and photography Claudia aims to undermine spatial and perceptual certitudes when she documents, analyses and dissects urban spaces, reassembling them in unfamiliar ways. Through a variety of artistic means, she presents the conventional perception of reality as just one option amongst many: she reminds the viewers that perspectives are fragile constructions constantly subject to reinterpretation.
Since 1991, she had more than a hundred exhibitions in Germany and throughout the world. From 2011 on, many of these took place in the FUNCK[ ]RAUM art studio that Claudia operates in Berlin. In 2017, she presented an installation Overlapping History in the Maq‘ad of Sultan Qaitbey.
She has been awarded various grants, prizes and awards. The installation Relative Shift, now presented in the MASQ, received the 1st prize at the Neukölln Art Prize Berlin in 2018.
DAVID O’ FLYNN
David O’ Flynn is a collage artist from County Cork in Ireland. While he had been drawing, sketching, and painting for some time, quite recently he stumbled across digital collage art, got inspired by other artists in this medium and taught himself how to do it. He usually includes his own sketches in the compositions. For David,
“creating collage is exploring the world of imagination taking the audience out of reality … it allows people from all over the world to connect through art and communicate their experiences, message and hopes for the future.”
In remarkably short time since January 2022, his work featured in the Marvellous Art Gallery magazine, six online shows in the UK and USA, and the Chronos Exhibition at Echo’s Studio in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
DU ‘AA HATEM
It has been said about the work of Du‘aa Hatem that
“she discovers the secret of emotional energy that dominates the composition and its kinetic and chromatic rhythm, regardless of the topic.”
She participated in more than 100 group exhibitions, and has had eleven solo shows at various prestigious venues in Egypt. Du‘aa Hatem also participated in the IX Edition of the Florence Biennale (2013), the 2nd edition of the Santorini Biennale (2014) and the Barcelona International Art Fair (2016). Her artistic visits and residences included Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.
Du‘aa Hatem is a professor and former head of Mural Painting and Decoration Department at the Faculty of Applied Art at Helwan University. She received many prizes for her paintings and animations, and is also active in the field of architecture. Her works have been acquired by the Ministry of Culture, the Egyptian Opera House, al-Ahram newspaper, the League of Arab States, Helwan University, and individual collectors.
JAMES GREEN
James Green grew up in the Rhondda Valleys in South Wales. He received his master’s degree in painting at the Royal College of Art in London, and then achieved a Ph.D. at Cardiff Metropolitan University, where he taught for eight years before relocating to Cairo.
James is currently teaching at the Faculty of Arts and Design at the British University in Egypt.
His research focuses on enhancing creative pedagogy, how magic is used in art, and the history of perspective and the effect on how it may have conditioned how we perceive the world around us.
His primary artistic medium is drawing, of which James says that from his early childhood it has remained the way he communicates with and understands the world.
He continues to exhibit artwork, publish, and teach internationally. His artwork is featured in many private collections.
KEVIN LIM KWI LOONG
Kevin Lim Kwi Loong is an Irish national now living in Kilcommon, county Tipperary. He was born in Malaysia of Hakka origin – a Chinese Han subgroup who form a large diaspora. An avid photographer since his childhood, he has fully committed to photography since 2016. His professional assignments included work for the award-winning high-end Irish designer clothing company Áine Knitwear, which earned him considerable international exposure.
Artistically, he expresses himself primarily though street photography, defining the basic structure of his images as a play on oppositions. He draws on various sources such as cognitive psychology, Surrealism, bio-neurology, and semiotics in exploring the issues of personal identity. This interest in altered body image and body perception is rooted in his work as a registered nurse with severely traumatised patients in the 1980s. Kevin conducts actual and on-line teaching in photography in Malaysia and in Ireland in addition to his pro bono involvement in various cultural projects. He is also an administrator for the 100,000 members-strong Worldwide Street Photography Club.
LAURE CATUGIER
The multimedia visual artist Laure Catugier was born in Tolouse in France and now lives and works in Berlin, where she runs her art studio. With a background in architecture, her work references 20th-century global architecture inspired by the Bauhaus movement, observing and analysing the interactions between the human body and the surrounding built space, and questioning how people can appropriate highly homogenized spaces and architectural forms in disparate cultural and climatic contexts. Playing with scales, perspectives, and framings she disrupts the conventional Cartesian-based perception of three-dimensional space.
These explorations use experience of travels and residencies in Egypt, Iran, Russia, Japan, Czech Republic, Poland, and Austria, with upcoming residencies in Bolivia and Taiwan.
Laure has participated in numerous group exhibitions, and between 2013 and 2022 staged eight solo shows. She has exhibited her work in Germany, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Great Britain, Poland, Japan, USA, Cuba and Egypt. She received numerous grants and awards, and publishes and lectures on art.
MINAS YOUNAN
The Egyptian sculptor Minas Gamil Naguib Younan was born in the city of Arish in North Sinai to a family of artists. Growing up in the coastal city surrounded by stupendous nature, as well as a passion for travel in Egypt’s oases, mountains and deserts with their rich and varied textures have inspired his artistic sense of nature, which is clearly reflected in his art work.
He graduated from the Faculty of Arts Education of Helwan University, where he specialized in sculpture. Subsequently, he earned a postgraduate diploma in folk arts and material culture from the Higher Institute of Folk Art at the Ministry of Culture’s Academy of Arts.
He participated in many local art exhibitions, including the Daughters of the Nile sculpture exhibition at the Maq‘ad of Sultan Qaitbey (MASQ) in 2020.
Minas is involved in the activities of the School of Creativity The Bishopric of Youth of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate and is a jury member in its annual fine arts competition.
NATHALIE MORCOS
Nathalie Morcos is a conceptual contemporary visual artist based in Cairo, Egypt. She received a BA in visual arts from the American University in Cairo.
Nathalie finds interest in making art that addresses controversial topics such as authority versus desire, mental health, exploration of the self, and the limitations of freedom and the body. She experiments with mixed mediums including performance, sound, interactive installations, and edible sculptures. She defines her aspiration in life as experiencing and indulging in ideas, and then creating ways in which the experiences and ideas can be communicated and shared with others.
Says Nathalie,
“For me, art is not about aesthetics, it is an idea, a connection that is made between artist and audience. It is what the audience perceives from the work presented, not what the artist intended.”
She stages her artworks both online and offline and gives performances online or offline with invited audience.
RANA CHALABI
Rana Chalabi is an established Syrian/Lebanese artist who lived in Cairo for over 35 years and now shares her time between Beirut, Cairo and Amsterdam.
She works in various media and techniques, including sculpture in different materials, oil painting, watercolours, charcoal and calligraphic inks.
Rana’s work reflects her varied interests but is dominated by the preoccupation with movement, both physical and spiritual.
“Movement fascinates me. It is the challenge of capturing the ephemeral nature of three-dimensional dynamic forces through the static media … Movement is life, and I want the viewer to feel that movement”.
She is also fascinated with Sufism, and related subjects often appear in her work.
The visionary artist’s work spans a number of themes and media, and also different continents: she has had numerous exhibits in Cairo as well as in Paris, London, Vienna, Beirut, Tokyo, and in the Arab-American Museum in the US.