Esraa Elfeky

Esraa Elfeky is an Egyptian-born artist, working with video, sculpture, drawing, painting, printmaking, sound, photography. She focuses on creating immersive experiences through installations using a multitude of materials and methods, ranging from ceramic, embroidery, and plastic to digital painting, drawing, and graphics.

In her works, she creates worlds that blur the line between fantasy and reality, in relation to the apocalypse and the destruction and resurrection of worlds and ideas.

Her latest body of work from 2019 is an ongoing exploration of the Egyptian desert landscape, and moving through spaces of solitude. As an open museum, full of history of biological, geological, and spirituality, political and traditions, the desert has passed through many forms of destruction and reconstruction. It is the ending of life, as in water, and the existence of another life, in a desert form. Elfeky examines the adaption of the Egyptian populace, after political apathy or to the situation of no power, similarly to the animals in the desert adapting to their landscape and environment after the removal of water.  Her current work is in continuous development, exhibited in stages, and develops further after each journey to the desert.

Quote

“What happens to me is that I get to a sensory state that is like a ride on the edge of the mind, between consciousness and unconsciousness, which take me on and off on different journeys of perception. All my thoughts and feelings come together at a point where the sense of time and space vanishes.” – Taking about her journeys in the desert and her work “3 Day Effect”.

Bio – Year City (Country)

1989 | Born in Cairo.eg

Formation

2021 | Morocco | Arab Media Lab | BEYOND THE “NEW-NORM” online program masterclass in filmmaking and media arts.

2018 – 2019| Alexandria.eg | MASS Alexandria independent study program.

2018 | Cairo.eg | Medrar for contemporary art in collaboration with D-CAF | Roznama Studio Program.

2011 | Cairo.eg|  Faculty of Art Education, Helwan University | Bachelor of Arts with high honors.

Exhibitions

2021 | Cairo.eg | Medrar for Contemporary Art | Cairo video festival

2021 | Online | Sumac Space | Davood Madadpoor | “A WHOLE POPULATION OF POETS”

2021 | Alexandria.eg | Institut français d’Égypte | Mohamed Dessoki | “Alternative skies” exhibition.

2020 | Auckland, New Zealand | Papatunga gallery for contemporary art | James Tapsell-Kururangi | Film Screening

2020 | Amman, Jordon | MMAG Foundation | “No ISBN”

2017 | Stockholm | Supermarket Art Fair

Awards

2020 |  UAE | Warehouse421 Project Revival Fund.

2020 | Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts | received a grant to attend the course.

2016 | Cairo.eg | The 25th Youth Salon Prize for Installation Art, Cairo’s Opera House