Born in 1990 in Cairo, Egypt. Lives in Gize, Egypt.

Trailblazers: An Inquiry Into Egypt’s Feminist History, 2024

Trailblazers is an inquiry into Egypt’s fragmented and dismissed feminist history using socially engaged self-portraiture, performance, and the public archive to reclaim and inscribe a counter-history. Growing up, I was deeply impacted by Egyptian films that were made from the 1940s to the 1960s, a period known as the golden age of cinema in Egypt-in which women played influential leading roles and a pivotal period in Egyptian history in which monarchy was abolished, British occupation over Egypt ended. Women finally earned the right to vote. These film portrayals were in stark contrast to the conservative reality that I witnessed the women around me navigate from the 90s onwards. Responding to this dissonance, I built a new reference and an archive informed by the public archive and driven by a feminist impulse. Through performance, influenced by studio portraiture in mid-twentieth century Egypt, particularly by Armenian Egyptian photographer Van Leo, I embody narratives of trailblazing women overlooked by mainstream records and present multiple readings of female liberation to monumentalize these overlooked Egyptian feminists.