Adel El Siwi, The Coyote, 2015. © Copyright the artist.
Adel El Siwi
Born in 1952
Lives & works in Cairo, Egypt
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Private Collections : Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; Mathaf, Doha, Qatar
Public Collections : Institut du monde Arabe, Paris, France; Greater Cairo Library, Egypt, Cairo;
Collected by museums and foundations : Kamel Lazaar Foundation British Museum, London, UK; The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE; Museum of Modern Egyptian Art, Cairo, Egypt Museum of Modern Egyptian Art, Cairo, Egypt;
Presentation of the artist
One of the most famous and influential contemporary Egyptian artists and mostly known for his monumental faces, Adel El Siwi delights us here with a body of work which is the fruit of six years dedicated to an intense reflection on the nature of the animal and its ambivalent relationship with the human being.
Adel El Siwi’s impressive and very personal painting technique combined with his ability to continuously update his narrative skills, as well as his unshakable faith in the possibility of giving birth to new worlds by means of painting, give birth to a body of work which is at the same time strongly sensual and conceptually lucid.
El Siwi’s colourful large canvases are equipped with a dazzling interior light, as if proclaiming a revelation, each telling a full story of its own. In his long series of studies of the different typologies of animals he attempt to seize the “personality” that lies behind each creature’s appearance.
El Siwi sets up a fine network of cultured citations drawn from literature, cinema and art history, whereby he appropriates other artists’ animals, reviving and reinventing them, to achieve a universe where every creature, whether animal or human, participates fully-fledged, not subject to hierarchical classification, but as a protagonist.
Nationality : Egypt
In connection with
Mashrabia Gallery, Cairo - Egypt
CV
Born in Beheira, Egypt
Solo exhibitions & presentations
2017
In the presence of the Animal, Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art, Cairo, Egypt
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2017
The Face and Beyond, Artspace Gallery, Dubai, UAE
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2015
Artspace Gallery, Dubai, UAE
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2013
Inception Gallery, Paris, France
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2013
Artspace Gallery, London, UK
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2012
Artspace Gallery, Dubai, UAE
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2010
The Fables, Horizon One Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
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2009
Contemporary icons, Artspace Gallery, Dubai , UAE
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2008
Au delà du visage, Le Violon Bleu, Tunisia
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2007
Siwi Faces, Artspace, Dubai, UAE
CV
Group exhibitions & fairs
2015
SYRA Arts, New York, USA
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2014
Contemporary Egyptian Art, Egyptian Academy, Rome, Italy
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2012
25 years of contemporary Arab art, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France
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2011
Window on contemporary Egyptian art, London, UK
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2009
Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
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2009
Invisible presence: Looking at the Body in Contemporary Egyptian Art (curated by Stefania Angarano), Samaakhana, Cairo, Egypt
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2009
The Face, Horizon One Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
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2008
The Other, Cairo Biennale, Cairo, Egypt
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2008
Arabia Italia: Chelsea Art Museum, New York, USA
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2008
Word into Art - Artists of the Middle East: traveling exhibition (curated by Venetia Porter), The British Museum, Dubai, UAE
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2008
Mediterranean Trilogy, Palais des Arts, Marseille, France
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2008
Arab artists in between Italian and Mediterranean Tradition Damascus/Beirut/Cairo
CV
Publications & essays
2006
Translation of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Life of a man
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2001
Translation and preface of Paul Klee’s Bauhaus Lectures
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1997
Member of the Supreme Council of Culture, Egypt
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1997
Editor of the magazine of Visual Art Ain
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1995
Translation and preface of the Leonardo da Vinci’s A treatise on painting
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