NERMINE EL ANSARI
Nermine El Ansari is a French-born Egyptian visual artist based in Iceland. 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 and explored the binaries provoked by urban and natural environment-borders, territories, and cartography-both real and imagined. Thus, she creates narratives of collective memory triggered by representations of personal and random images in connection with acts of memorisation questioning concepts such as identity and nation.
Nermine received her BA in Painting from the Fine Art school of Versailles in 1998 followed by her MFA(2002) in multimedia from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris and earned a scholarship to study at Instituto Superior de Arte in La Havana, Cuba. In 2018, she was engaged with the Arts Council of Norway (Kulturdirektoratet) in the project “An Inclusive Cultural Sector in the Nordics“ which had an arts-centered approach to embracing “diversity“ within cultural institutions in the Nordic countries. Since 2021, Nermine is a board member of The Living Art Museum in Reykjavik.
Her work has been presented in various international exhibitions; most recently in Mucem, the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean in Marseille, France, in Hafnarborg Museum, and at Lunga Art Festival in Iceland.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2020 “ Exercise“video installation, Studio 45/ Wendenstrase 45C, Hambourg
2020 Artist intervention, Borgarbókasafnið, Reykjavik
2018 “Hidden Angels” Wind and Weather Window Gallery, Reykjavik
2018 “Memory Spring”, SIM Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland
2012-2011 “Dream and Inverse Dream”, Artelewa space, Cairo, Egypt
2009 “Transit” Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
2009 “Transit” Madre Museum, Naples, Italy
2009 “Constructions and Hidden Monsters”, Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
2008 “Olympic Stadium 2945” Werkhof gallery, Kiel, Germany
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 UNESCO Palace, Beirut, Lebanon
2001 “Drawings”, Museum of African Art, Havana, Cuba
1998 “Paintings”, Harichi Gallery, Paris, France
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2022 LungA Art Festival, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland
2021 “Community of Sentient Beings“, Hafnarborg Museum, Hafnarfjörður, Iceland
2020 “Regenerate#2- Physical Newness“, Gallery Port, Reykjavik, Iceland
2018 “Rooibos This Way!”, Laugardalslaug pool, 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
2011-2010 “ Fames: Family Vaudeville”, Darb 1718, Cairo Egypt
2010 “Futuropolis”, Saad Zaghloul Institution, Cairo Egypt
2010 “The Invisible Presence”, Mawali Museum, Islamic Cairo Egypt
2008 “ Cairoscape”, Kunstlerhaus Bethanian, Berlin, Germany
2007 “Occidentalism”, Espace Karim Francis, Hotel Suisse, Cairo, Egypt
2007 XVA Gallery, Dubai
2005 El Azhar Park with Mashrabia Gallery, Cairo, Egypt
2003 Landowski Space, Billancourt, Boulogne, France
2002 French Cultural Centre, Beirut, Lebanon
2001 Wifredo Lam Museum, Havana, Cuba
2001 Al Nitaq Art Festival, Cairo, Egypt
PERFORMANCES:
2020 Video Performance “ Souvenir évadé, image erronée“ collaboration with Adam Switala and Piotr Pawlus, MuCEM, Marseille, France
2013 Video Performance “L’objet du crime et son souvenir d’enfance” collaboration with
Maurice Louca, Vartan Avakian, Muhammed El Hajj, MuCEM, Marseille, France
2007/2008/2009 100LIVES Electronic Music Festival, Cairo, Alexandria (Egypt), Amman Jordan
2008-2007 Meeting Point 5 (Contemporary Art Festival) “ Psychogeography of Loose
Associations” collaboration with Sherif El Azma and Maurice Louca video performance,
Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Berlin, Kiel, Brussels
ART RESIDENCIES
2022 Villa Empain-Fondation Boghossian Art Residency, Brussels, Belgium
2019 Art Camp supported by the Icelandic National Commission for UNESCO, Malta, Gozo
2016/2014 SIM Art Residency (Step Beyond Grant), Reykjavik, Iceland
2013 KKV Monumental bronze foundry, Malmo, Sweden (produced by KKV)
2008 Art Residency for lithography and engraving Salzau, Germany
2008 Art Residency in the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany
2006 “Peace“ Symposium, Hamburg, Germany
2005 Hweilan International Artists Workshop, Hweilan, Taiwan
WORK EXPERIENCE:
2023-2015 Interpreter from Arabic, Spanish, French to English for the Queer Organisation
”Samtokin78” and the Directorate of immigration, Reykjavik, Iceland
2023-2021 Board member of The Living Art Museum, Nýlistasafnið, Reykjavik, Iceland
2022 Art workshop in Lunga Art School, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland
2022 Collaborative curator for public event program “Komd‘inn“ at Gerðarsafn Museum, Reykjavik
2022 Art workshop in Myndilistaskóllin for children from asylum seekers' families, Reykjavik
2022-2020 Art workshop for asylum seekers women, Menningarhús Gerðurbergi
2020-2019 Art teacher in L‘Alliance Française, Reykjavik, Iceland
2019 Arts Council Norway Kulturradet, Inclusion project within the Nordic Countries, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Finland
2019 Art teacher assistant and interpreter for Mothers and children asylum seekers at
Myndlistaskólinn (Visual Art School), Reykjavik, Iceland
2018 Art teacher for students with intellectual autism at Myndlistaskolinn, Reykjavik, Iceland
2005-2003 Art Professor (full time) Lycée Français, Cairo, Egypt
2002 Stage setting with drawings for Dries Van Noten fashion show, Paris France
2002 Training students silkscreen/engraving, Lebanese Academy of Fine Art (ALBA), Beirut, Lebanon
1998 Assistant to Nicolas Topor, Paris, France
1997 Installing lithography press, training students in Fine Art School, Abidjan, Ivory Coast
EDUCATION:
2020-2019 BA1 Icelandic as a second language, University of Iceland, Reykjavik
2019-2018 Practical Diploma (Icelandic as a second language), University of Iceland, Reykjavik
2002 MFA in multimedia, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
2002 Grant award for exchange study in Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana, Cuba
1998 BA in painting with unanimous honors of the jury, Fine Art School Versailles, France
1993-1994 Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, Egypt
1994 Spanish Language Certificate, Instituto Cervantes, Cairo, Egypt
1993 French Baccalaureate (Literature, Philosophy, Language) Lyçée Français du Caire, Egypt
LANGUAGE:
Arabic, French, Spanish, English, Icelandic (learning)