Exhibition for Ahmed Sabry, Wessam Quraish at Arcade Gallery

CAIRO – 14 April 2018: A joint exhibition is bringing together two Egyptian artists, Ahmed Sabry and Wessam Quraish, at the Arcade Gallery on Sunday, April 15 until April 30.

Titled "2010-2017", the exhibition showcases both artists' works from that seven-year period of time. Despite working in different styles and fields, they have come together on the shared basis of artistic growth, allowing visitors to marvel at how they have both independently evolved and grown throughout the years.

Painter and animator Ahmed Sabry was born in 1982 in Minya, Egypt. He graduated from Helwan University in 2004 and currently resides in Cairo. A theme Sabry explores in his works is the relationship between man and media, focusing on popular culture and the language of mass media to deconstruct topics such as sex, politics, "iconophilia" and power in a surreal and humorous way. To accomplish this, Sabry uses a wide range of techniques, such as rotoscoping (tracing live action footage to create animation), painting and digital manipulations.

He has held five solo exhibitions at the Mashrabia Art Gallery and has also contributed to various group shows, such as the 8th Cairo Video Festival Video Art & Experimental Films, the Salon of Youth, the Four Seasons Nile Plaza and much more. Sabry has also exhibited internationally, at venues such as Beijing's Art Fair, the Slovakia Film Festival, the Bamako Biennial in Mali and France's Ventenac-en-Minervois.

Wessam Quraish was born in the Qena governorate. She received a bachelor's degree in art education in 2007 and a diploma of photography and drawing from Helwan University in 2011. She draws inspiration for her work from the culture of Upper Egypt, having been fascinated from a young age by the writings of authors such as Yehia El-Taher Abdullah.

Another major source of inspiration is dreams, which serve as an important source of visual information and reference for her artworks. Quraish works in various mediums such as photography, multimedia and painting. She has contributed to various exhibitions in Egypt, including "7 Female Artists" at the Hanager Center for Arts.

The Arcade Gallery is a newly opened art gallery established in February 2017. Located in Maadi, the gallery is held inside a comfortable villa. It aims to promote interest in contemporary art across numerous disciplines and offers artists a nice, little environment in which to showcase their works.