Jasmina Metwaly (b. 1982, Warsaw)

Jasmina Metwaly is a Polish visual artist and filmmaker based in Cairo.

After completing a MA at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, she achieved a Postgraduate Diploma at the Byam Shaw School of Art at Central Saint Martins, London in 2009. The same year she moved to Cairo where she started a regular co-operation with artist and filmmaker Philip Rizk. Their practice of video activists documents and denounces social injustice, corruption and the exploitation of Egyptian working-class by capitalist companies.

Metwalay’s Video Paintings are aesthetically compelling exploration of Egyptian society, presenting colorful glimpses of public places and collective moments in the city of Cairo. Her work often portrays the human presence as a compact flow choreographing simultaneous movements, raising questions of national identity, group membership and socio-cultural behavior.

Metwaly’s work has been exhibited internationally.

Selected exhibitions include Uprising, Jeu de Paume, Paris (2016), The German Pavilion, 56^th Venice Biennale, Venice (2015), From Behind of the Monument, Berlinale Internationale Filmfestspiele, Forum Expanded, Berlin (2014), About the Donkey that wanted to become a painting, Cairo Documenta Exhibition, Cairo (2012), Remarks on a Square, Ai Wei Wei Gallery, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam (2012), Cairo Intifada (directed with Philip Rizk), Berlinale Internationale Filmfestspiele, Berlin (2011), Remarks on color (Yellow version), Cairo Documenta, Cairo (2010).

Metwaly’s Video Paintings Tahrir Square: Cut-Skin and Tahrir Square: Metro vent from Remarks on Medan (Tahrir version) video series have been included in the group exhibition Uprising on display from October 2016 to January 2017 at Jeu de Paume Concorde, Paris. For more information please visit Uprising exhibition web page.

Jasmina Metwaly was the winner of The Open Prize 2010. 

“These video paintings are cut out fragments of Sinai. Nevertheless, each video is also an attempt to define time, and by time I don't refer to segments measured in minutes or seconds. Rather than that, I try to explore an infinity (no time) that occurs within a recorded image. An infinity that lead me to the repetitive and perpetual motion of the sea, the light, the rock and the looped movement of the globe."

Jasmina Metwaly