“My work has been irreversibly influenced by studying under prominent contemporary Egyptian artists such Adam Henein and the late Sobhy Guirguis.” Maged Mekhail
Born in 1982, Maged Mekhail lives and works in Cairo.
First, of his class, Maged Mekhail studied under one of the top sculptors in modern Egyptian art history, Adam Henein, for four life-altering years after graduating from the Helwan Fine Arts Institute in 2004.
Embarking on a career on his own in 2013 with a stunning solo exhibition at ArtTalks, Mekhail has participated in various government-sponsored salons, group exhibitions, competitions, and the famed Aswan International Sculpture Symposium. He received four government scholarships from the Ministry of Culture. In 2011, Mekhail won the 2011 First Sculpture Prize from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture for his masterful sculpture “Misr el Ghaliya” “Beloved Egypt” – a grand testament of his achievement at a very young age.
His work, paintings, sketches, and sculptures, reflect symbols from the various ingredients making up the complex Egyptian identity, including its Coptic, Islamic, and Pharaonic roots. The artist, who former culture minister Farouk Hosni dubbed “Mahmoud Mokhtar [father of Egyptian sculpture] in the making,” says his work has been irreversibly influenced by studying under prominent contemporary Egyptian artists such Adam Henein and the late Sobhy Guergues.
Maged Mekhail transports us back in time and space from Ancient Egypt to Babylon and Mesopotamia to further East. Rulers, traders, warriors, men of sciences, and prophets crossed roads, ports, and oceans seeking larger empires, flourishing trade, and spreading religion. Thousands of years later, their great-grandchildren are crossing the roads again – this time heading West, seeking refuge and escaping civil wars and violence. The crossing is no longer the means to enlarge one’s home but rather the prevalent means of survival – to escape from home. In Many Rivers to Cross, painter and sculptor Maged Mekhail chooses to ignore the slow decline of our present and brings to light our past by exploring the traces left behind the convergence of national, racial, and ethical lines that supposedly should bond us together. He embraces the endless possibilities of remembrance and provides a multi-dimensional representation of the Egyptian world. The many different chapters across a span of thousands of years appear as fragments absorbed into Mikhail’s works, calling on a transcendent power to provide some meaning to guide our fragile present.