Engy Mohsen (*1995 in Cairo) is an artist, curator, and researcher. In her artistic practice, she examines notions of ‘participation’ and ‘collectivity’ by creating frameworks that invite non-artists and artists to think about how spaces can be organized to include the ‘other’. She works -solo and collaboratively- with text, drawing, photography, performance, discursive acts and conversation as a medium. Mohsen’s research focuses on the emergence of independent art schools in the Arab world, with particular attention to their entanglement with foreign cultural funding and their strategies for negotiating cultural sovereignty through decolonial pedagogies. She holds an MSc in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford, an MA in Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts from Zürich University of the Arts, and a joint BSc in Architecture and Urban Design from the German University in Cairo and the Technical University of Brandenburg. She was previously part of Artists for Artists (AfA) Masterclass: Radical Care, MASS Alexandria, Roznama Studio Program, and School of Commons.She is a founding member of K-oh-llective, a platform for resource-sharing among artists, writers and curators in Egypt and the Arab world, and part of the curatorial team of Les Complices*, a self-organised community-based art space in Zürich.
In Vienna, she will develop a text-based art piece–a game about solidarity, together with cultural mediator and anti-racism trainer Sedra Arab. Their work will be presented in the exhibition Against the Playbook at philomena+ and DAS WEISSE HAUS between mid-February and the end of March.
