Medrar for Contemporary Art
10 Gamal ElDin Abo Elmahasen St, Garden city, 8th floor.
Cairo
Cairo Governorate
11519
Égypte
- Arts
- International/Cultural relations
- Media
- Others
- Youth and education
Medrar sets the stage for artists seeking to have extensive conversations and collaborations with their peers to develop their purpose as active contemporary artists, thus creating a more dynamic and inspired movement.
By tapping into this existing collective intelligence, Medrar encourages cooperation over competition among artists, locally and internationally, as well as between institutions, critics, and technologists, to engage and experiment in this rich playground of media arts.
This non-profit art space, running since 2005, achieves this through hosting festivals, workshops, and events to stimulate the scene, providing a collaborative space for media artists, and documenting and disseminating audio-visual content on the contemporary art movement in Egypt.
Mission:
- Medrar seeks the dissemination of experimental and visual art works, with a main focus on
digital and electronic mediums.
- To foster collaboration among artists, filmmakers, techies, musicians and writers who produce
innovative, interdisciplinary work.
- To represent an artistic hub and cultural incubator for emerging and established artists seeking
the production of innovative and interdisciplinary works
Objectives:
- To develop a sustainable, communally engaged artistic practice in Egypt, through
enriching existing networks between emerging and established artists, art critics, cultural
institutions, educators and the general public.
- To boost artistic production in Egypt by providing support for emerging artists through a
range of exhibition opportunities as well as artistic and production-oriented workshops.
- To present a structural and curatorial methods as a contrast to the prevailing academic
and state perspectives on contemporary art.
- To diffuse alternative and experimental artistic practices - such as new media art, video
art - through national and international channels.
- Strengthen the documentation and archiving practices which enable local and regional
research opportunities through the provision of material, preservation of exhibition
coverage, artist talks and documentation of work.
- To integrate the notion of collaboration and alliance among all members and key
stakeholders involved in the Egyptian contemporary art scene with the intent to cultivate
strong, local and interdependent network.
- To encourage and promote cultural exchange between Egyptian and foreign artists
through lectures, screenings, projects and workshops.
Roznama - competition and exhibition
It is a periodical competition and exhibition for contemporary visual art. Roznama intends to function as
an art and cultural incubator to nurturing the growth of artists, to boost their technical capabilities and
spread their artworks. This competition is founded with the intention of moving beyond popular and
academic perspective in the established arts, towards the investigation of new and experimental media
arts practices.
Roznama - Studio program
Roznama studio program is an alternative experimental granted mentorship addressed to Egyptian
emerging artists. The studio program aims to explore the artistic Egyptian scene by using experimental
means, sets about questioning, scrutinising and probing the institutionalisation and presentation of
contemporary art. Through an eight-months program, selected artists will be mentored, and trained on
different art medium to provide them with an alternative perspective to examine and explore the world we
live in.
Cairo Video Festival
Cairo Video Festival’s vision is to highlight worldwide experiments in the moving image, and
particularly video art. The Cairo Video Festival function as a platform for further and extended
conversations between video-artists, curators and the public, and a space for artists to
showcase their innovative, low-budget video art productions that are selected according to
quality, authenticity and conviction in investigation of subject matter.
Through a month of screenings, artists talks, and discussions the Cairo Video Festival fosters
this growing public interest in new media production and experimentation to expose audiences
to artists and concepts from around the world. The festival is Medrar’s first contribution to the art
scene in 2005 and is the project through which Medrar was later established. It started as a
collective of visual artists who were experimenting with a new medium and took the initiative to
establish themselves the space in which their works, along with works from all over the world,
would be shown in the heart of this vigorous city.
Medrar TV
Medrar.TV is an online contemporary Arab arts channel, operating from Cairo Egypt. It produces
bilingual documentary videos about contemporary Arab visual arts, music, performance, theater
and film., and covers exhibitions, shows, concerts, festivals, and also document studio visits and
one-on-one discussions among artists. Medrar TV’s goal is to create an engaging and
accessible resource on contemporary Arab art that is useful to the art community, organizations,
funders, historians, journalists, critics, students and the general public.
MedrarTV’s media programs target the general public, but its extensive media archive of events,
exhibitions, interviews, talks and symposiums serves as a repository of contemporary arts
activities regionally as well as internationally (when content is related to local practices). This
content will soon be available online and open to access for artists, curators, educators,
researchers and the general public. MedrarTV also trains local videographers and editors in arts
documentation through on-the-job training and occasional workshops with both local and
international partners.
MedRX
The capacities of immersive media to artistically and creatively translate space and place, and evoke empathy and care for areas of concern and communities of practice, are foregrounded. MedRX is a long-term program that champions the creation of counter-narratives that reimagine our world and alter our understanding of global and local matters. Sprouting from the cooperative principles and progressive objectives of accessibility in digital fields nurtured by the Open Lab Egypt (OLE) project from 2009 to 2014, MedRX expands through the ideals of dynamic interactions, communication, and collaborations within the XR context.
MedRX provides unique interactive, participatory experiences and alternative spaces of experimentation for artists, audiences, and cultural practitioners to develop local knowledge in the field and provide artists and art practitioners with opportunities to explore, develop, and showcase their XR projects. It strives to bridge the gap between alternative artistic research and production by facilitating and developing labs, workshops, exchanges, lectures, exhibitions, and events. It integrates new media, immersive technologies, extended realities that span virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, creative coding, and digitronic arts with a multitude of visual and auditory artistic practices. These components are linked to one another to build a sustainable ecosystem of digital art production and technologies.
Medrar has always sought to boost artistic practices in Egypt through two different levels: First,
by developing new opportunities for emerging and established artists. Second, facilitating
access and insights for the general public to the production of Arts and Culture in Egypt, and
abroad.
For the past years, Medrar has engaged a significant number of local and international artists
into its programs on a monthly basis, ranging from single-day event to month-long exhibitions
and festivals. In 2017 and 2018, Medrar shared and showcased the work of 350+ artists (both
national and international) for Cairo audience. In addition to exhibitions, technical workshop,
vocational training and lectures, we also started organizing few live Audio/Visual performances,
which attracted numerous new visitors to the space.
At Medrar, we are always on the lookout for new institutions that can help us improve our practices and activities. We carefully evaluate potential partners and identify those who share our values and goals. Once we've established a partnership, we work closely with our new collaborators to share knowledge and expertise, leveraging our collective strengths to achieve even greater impact. Through this collaborative approach, we can continually learn, grow, and innovate, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in our field.
