Hamdy Reda

Hamdy Reda is a visual artist, curator and cultural activist, living and working between Egypt and Germany. Born in Cairo in 1972, Reda holds a BFA - Painting with honors from University of Helwan, Cairo (1997), and took part in numerous workshops and training programs in art history, curation and cultural management throughout his career.

Alongside his artistic career, he founded Artellewa, an artist residency space located in Ard El Lewa, a popular district in Giza. For 10 years, Reda served as the Artistic Director of the space, where he received over 100 local and international artists and sought to activate a dialogue between the artists and the community.

Reda’s work reflects an image of his social, political and urban environment in Egypt, with its many contradictions, beauty and ugliness, wealth and poverty, modernity and underdevelopment. His images are created with a local Egyptian eye, but are adept at communicating with the international art scene. In general, his artworks resonate between aesthetic and poetic values on the one hand, and the objective concept on the other.

Reda’s work has been exhibited at many venues within Egypt as well as around the world, and he is a recipient of various artistic awards, which, together with the interest of art critics in his work, is evidence of his high profile as an artistic talent. Reda’s artwork includes several visual mediums, such as painting, experimental photography, installation, and interactive art works. His involvement in the curating and management of many art and cultural activities locally and internationally reflects his interest in promoting the language of creative dialogue and developing mechanisms for artistic interaction.