ADEL EL SiWi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Adel El Siwi (b. 1952, Behera) was initially trained as a doctor and studied medicine at Cairo University between 1970 and 1976, but simultaneously indulged in independent study at the Faculty of Fine Arts between 1974 and 1975. In 1980, he relocated to Milan, Italy, where he lived for a decade before moving back to Cairo, where he continues to live and work.

El Siwi has had numerous solo exhibitions in galleries around the world, including in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Italy, France, England, Bahrain, and Dubai. He has also participated in the Cairo Biennale in 1996 and again in 2008, the Sharjah Biennale in 1997, and the Venice Biennale in 2009.

His work has been included in several group exhibitions, among them, ’Rencontres Africaines’ at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris in 1994, ’Modernities and Memories’ at the Venice Biennale in 1997, ‘Transafrican Art’ at the Orlando Museum in Miami in 2000, ‘Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East’ in Dubai in 2008, ‘Oum Kalsoum: La Quatrième Pyramide’ at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris in 2008, ‘ItaliaArabia’ at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York in 2008. He was invited by Le Laboratoire: Sculpture Urbaine to project his work onto historical buildings in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1996), Grenoble, France (2000) and Alger, Algeria (2003).

In addition to his career as a visual artist, El Siwi has translated into Arabic numerous art historical texts by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Paul Klee.

Adel El Siwi

Egyptian Cat , 2012