Farida El Gazzar's Dream City: Drawings and Paintings from Cairo

Farida El Gazzar's Dream City: Drawings and Paintings from Cairo

Farida El Gazzar's Dream City: Drawings and Paintings from Cairo

By : Medrar TV مدرار تي في

Gypsum Gallery celebrated the launch of its new space with a solo show by Egyptian-Greek artist Farida El Gazzar. Titled `Dream City,` it brings together a collection of small-scale drawings and paintings produced between 2012 and 2015. The exhibition acts as a visual memoir of Cairo for the Athens-based artist, and is based on old family photographs, as well as snapshots of Cairo and Alexandria taken on annual summer vacations. One group of work activates her family album of photographs through images in pencil and acrylic drawings. Another group is a painting series of the flora of Egypt. The exhibition also includes a selection of paintings of architectural façades.

El Gazzar was born in 1975 in Alexandria, Egypt. She graduated from Vakalo School of Art & Design, in Athens, and then moved to London where she earned her Bachelor of Arts from Kingston University, and her Master of Arts degree from the Royal College of Art. From 2003 to 2007, she was co-founder of the creative team WARDA. Her ongoing relationship with the Middle East is a result of her early years in Alexandria and Kuwait and has been realized more recently through her residencies and research in Cairo and Manama.

[This video was produced by Medrar TV and is featured in partnership with Jadaliyya Culture] 

What's the Vision Behind D-CAF's 2015 Music Program?

In this video, journalist and Dandin.me co-founder Abdel-Rahman Hussein interviews Mahmoud Refat about the vision for the music program in the 4th Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF). Refat, an acclaimed musician from Cairo and founder of 100Copies label and 100Copies Music Space has been curating the music component of D-CAF since its inception, bringing in a range of local, regional and international artists such as Emel Mathlouthi, Yasmine Hamdan, Ali Talibab, El Rass and of course the growing Mahraganat groups. This year, several of the international acts were DJs such as Boris Brejcha and DJ Why Be, while local and regional musicians included: Ismael, Boikutt, Abyusif and El Dakhlaweya.


Refat explains the consistent vision he developed for the program and has been using for the past four years. He discusses its relevance and the impact he hopes to achieve on the local music scene with it.

The interview is in Arabic and has English subtitles.

This video is produced by Medrar.TV in partnership with D-CAF 2015.



[This video was produced by Medrar TV and is featured in partnership with Jadaliyya Culture]