NERMINE EL ANSARI
Nermine El Ansari (b1975) is an Egyptian visual artist living and working in Reykjavik, Cairo, and Marseille. She works with different mediums, such as installation, video, drawing, photography, and performance. Her earlier pieces were concerned with bodies in human and beast form, presenting a distorted view of subjects and examining a series of dualities and inversions. Over the past decade, she has focused on social geography, exploring the binaries provoked by urban and rural environments, borders, territories, and cartography- real and imagined. She also creates narratives of collective memory triggered by personal and random image representations in connection with acts of remembering that challenge concepts of memory, gender, and nation.
Nermine received her diploma in Painting from the Fine Art School of Versailles in 1998, followed by her diploma in multimedia from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris (2002). She then participated in an exchange program at the Instituto Superior de Arte in La Habana, Cuba. In 2018, she was engaged with the Oslo Arts Council in Norway, Kulturradet, for a cultural project to promote diversity against systemic racism within institutions in the Nordic countries ( Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Sweden, and Greenland). From 2021 to 2023, Nermine was a board member of The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik.
Her work has been featured in various international exhibitions, most recently at the Skaftfell Art Center in Seyðisfjörður, Ásmundarsalur Gallery in Reykjavik, and Mucem, the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean in Marseille.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2024 Unpredictable Archive of Invisible Things, D.N.A. Collective at Ásmundarsalur Gallery, Reykjavík, Iceland
2024-2023 No Longer, Skaftfell Art Center, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland
2020 Exercise, Studio 45/ Wendenstrase 45C, Hambourg, Germany
2018 Hidden Angels, Wind Weather Window Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland
2018 Memory Spring, SIM Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland
2012-2011 Dream-Inverse Dream, Artelewa space, Cairo, Egypt
2009 Transit, Madre Museum, Naples, Italy
2009 Constructions and Hidden Monsters, Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
2007 Exercise, Mashrabia Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
2006 Exercise, KunstrumB Gallery, Kiel, Germany
2003 Ghost City, Espace Karim Francis, Cairo, Egypt
2003 Horizon, Zico House, Beirut, Lebanon
2002 Passage, Adzak Museum, Paris, France
2001 Drawings, Museum of African Art, Havana, Cuba
1998 Paintings, Harichi Gallery, Paris, France
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2024 Shipwreck, with UKAI Project & SIM at Korpúlfsstaðir, Reykjavik, Iceland
2022 LungA Art Festival, Seyðifjörður, Iceland
2021 Community of Sentient Beings, Hafnarborg Museum, Hafnarfjörður, Iceland
2020 Regenerate#2- Physical Newness, Gallery Port, Reykjavik, Iceland
2013 Le Caire Mon Amour, Hotel Viennoise Cairo, Egypt
2012 Le Corps Découvert, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France
2011 Maspero, Darb 1718, Cairo, Egypt
2011 Fames: Family Vaudeville, Darb 1718, Cairo Egypt
2010 Futuropolis, Saad Zaghloul Institution, Cairo Egypt
2010-2009 Invisible Presence, Mashrabia Gallery at Mawali Museum, Islamic Cairo Egypt
2008 Cairoscape, Kunstlerhaus Bethanian, Berlin, Germany
2007 Occidentalism, Espace Karim Francis at Hotel Suisse, Cairo, Egypt
2001 Wifredo Lam Museum, Havana, Cuba
PERFORMANCES:
2020 Souvenir Évadé, Image Erronée, Mucem, Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean, Marseille, France
2013 L’Objet du Crime et Son Souvenir d’Enfance, collaboration with Maurice Louca & Vartan Avakian, MuCEM, Marseille, France
2009/2007 100LIVES music festival, Cairo, Alexandria (Egypt), Amman (Jordan)
2008/2007 Meeting Point 5 Art Festival, Psychogeography of Loose Associations, video performance with Sherif El Azma & Maurice Louca, Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels
ART RESIDENCIES:
2023 Oct/Dec, Skaftfell Art Residency, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland
2023 March, SIM apartment, Athens, Greece
2022 Villa Empain-Fondation Boghossian Art Residency, Brussels, Belgium
2019 Painting Camp, Malta Gozo, supported by the Icelandic National Commission for UNESCO
2014 SIM Art Residency, Reykjavik, Iceland
2013 KKV Monumental Bronze Foundry, Malmo, Sweden
2008 Art Residency in the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
2005 Hweilan International Artists Workshop, Hweilan, Taiwan
GRANTS:
2024 Listamannalaun, artist salary, Iceland Ministry of Culture and Education
2023 Project Grant, Myndsef, Iceland
2023 Muggur Travel Grant-SÍM Association of Icelandic Visual Artists
2013 KKV-Kokurrensverket, International Sculpture project grant, Sweden
2005 Step Beyond Travel Grant
LANGUAGES:
Arabic, French, Spanish, English, Icelandic (basics)
EDUCATION:
2020-2019 BA1 Icelandic as a 2nd language, University of Iceland, Reykjavik
2019-2018 Practical Diploma, Icelandic as a 2nd language, University of Iceland, Reykjavik
2002 Diploma of École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
2002 Student exchange program at Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana, Cuba
1998 Diploma in painting (with distinction, félicitations du jury), Fine Art School Versailles, France
1994 Certificate of one year at the Fine Arts Faculty-Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt
1994 Spanish Language Certificate, Instituto Cervantes, Cairo, Egypt
1993 French Baccalaureate (Literature, Philosophy, Language) French School, Cairo, Egypt