Mohamed Abouelnaga

Mohamed Abouelnaga is a multidisciplinary visual artist, art professor, curator and developer. Throughout his colorful career, he created award winning art projects, fulfilled his responsibility towards his community and brought up new generation of young artists with his teaching, workshop and his multitude of practices.

Born in the Egyptian city of Tanta, Abouelnaga studied art and received his PhD in art philosophy in 1997. He was the first Middle Eastern artist to receive a grant from the Japan Foundation to study the arts of papermaking. In the past two decades, Abouelnaga made several solo shows in Egypt and around the world that varied between painting, video and installation. He also represented Egypt in the Venice Biennial 2002 and received the First Prize of the Alexandria Biennial in 2001.

As a curator, he created in 2002 the biggest and most successful Artist Book Biennial in the Alexandria Bibliotheca, entitled “Imagining the Book”. In 2009, he was assigned to become the curator of the 25th Alexandria Biennial for Mediterranean Countries that will open December 17, 2009.

Abouelnaga founded Elnafeza for Contemporary Art & Development where he practices papermaking from raw environment friendly material. He is also fellow of Ashoka, the global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. In 2007, Newsweek named Abouelnaga as one of 100 entrepreneurs who can change the world. He was also named a Goodwill Cultural Ambassador for Africa's by the President of Senegal.