Three significant changes have been made to this year’s Egypt International Art Fair, which will be held in Cairo next month. It is now known as Art Cairo, only galleries rather than independent artists are represented, and it will take place at the Grand Egyptian Museum, the hottest new location in the capital.
The 2020 fair’s founder, Mohamed Younis, said, “We’re reaching a new maturity level.” From February 11 to February 14, Art Cairo will showcase 30 Middle Eastern galleries and more than 150 artists’ works, according to the National.
The Dusit Thani LakeView hotel in east Cairo previously hosted the expo. When it was held in March 2020, just days before the Covid-19 pandemic was announced, things got off to a shaky start. Covid-19 health and safety regulations continued to make it difficult to draw a sizable number of visitors in 2021.
Younis claims that the fair’s attendance of 11,000 people over five days the previous year signaled the start of its real success. The number of tourists the organizers anticipate this year is 15,000–18,000. Younis claims that to better correspond with international art fairs, they changed the event’s name to Art Cairo and restricted participation to galleries.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, which just partially opened for events in December, will serve as the show’s “majestic setting,” which will raise its prominence, according to him. Noor Alasker, the project manager for Art Cairo, thinks there ought to be more art shows in Egypt. She claims that it contains many galleries, artists, and collectors—the essential components of an art show.
Despite challenges, Younis, a marketing and management expert who previously co-founded Azad Art Gallery, saw an opportunity. “The issue is that international recognition for Egyptian artists is not very high. Additionally, there is hardly much recognition of foreign artists in Egypt. We were a little bit closed off from the outside world, but this has changed that,” he claims.
A total of 12 Egyptian galleries are represented in the exhibition this year: Arcade, ArtTalks, Azad Art Gallery, Gallery Misr, Le Lab, Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art, Medrar, Motion Art Gallery, Picasso East Art Gallery, Shelter Art Space, Tintera, and Zamalek Art Gallery.
Many local galleries, including Art on 56th, Kaf Contemporary Art Gallery, Nadine Fayad Art Gallery, Saleh Barakat Gallery, and Zaat, are Lebanese-owned. Fann A Porter in Dubai and Khawla Art & Culture in Abu Dhabi, both founded by Her Highness Sheikha Khawla bint Ahmed Khalifa Al Suwaidi, the wife of National Security Advisor His Highness Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, respectively, are the Emirates’ representatives.
Other participants include George Kamel Gallery from Syria, Q0de Art Space from Jordan, Fine Arts by Fatina Al Sayed from Kuwait, and Errm Art Gallery from Saudi Arabia.