Mohamed Abla

Multimedia artist Mohamed Abla was born in 1953 in Belqas in the Egyptian Nile Delta. After graduating from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria (1973), Abla embarked upon a seven-year journey around Europe, where he visited museums in Spain, France, Belgium and Germany, eventually studying sculpture and graphics in Vienna and Zurich.

His first solo exhibition ran at the Hohmann Gallery, Hamburg, Germany (1979), followed by shows at Gallery Ewat, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands (1989); Art Hall, Örebro, Sweden (1991) and the Egyptian Academy of Rome, Italy (1991), amongst others. In 1994 he won the First Prize at the Kuwait Biennial, followed by the Grand Prix at the Alexandria Biennale, Egypt in 1997. He has also participated in several international art events such as the Havana Biennial, Cuba and his work has been part of several group exhibitions amongst others at the British Museum in London and the Kunstmuseum Bonn. Abla’s central motivation is to familiarise a national and international audience with every facet of Egyptian society while addressing social and political topics through complex layers.

Teaching at a various international institutions led him to found the Fayoum Art Center in 2007. Today it is an establishment where young artists from all over the world live and work together. In 2009, he established the first caricature museum in the Middle East and North Africa. After the 2011 revolution, Mohamed Abla was elected as part of the Committee of 50 that wrote Egypt’s new constitution. In 2022 Abla was awarded the prestigious German Goethe Medal for his life’s achievements.