About

Maher Dawoud, is an Egyptian artist, born and raised in Cairo Egypt in 1983. An artist since childhood, Maher always believed in the power of visual impressions to deliver his ideas. 

In 2005, he received his BFA from the Mural Painting Department in the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University, Zamalek. It was during his final two years as a student that he began experimenting with different materials than paint all the while searching for a more interesting surface to touch and feel. At the young age of 26, and after teaching at the Mural Department of the university for a few years, he acquired his MFA from the same university under the thesis title “The Artistic Values of the Linear Composition in German Colored Glass”. All the while teaching and experimenting with glass and mosaics, he obtained his PhD in 2013 from the same faculty under the thesis title “The Employment of Mosaics in Installation Art (analytical and comparative study)”.

Maher was recently nominated to represent Egypt at the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in May 2015. The project he designed with 2 other Egyptian colleagues named “CAN YOU SEE?” was a large mosaic construction of the word PEACE. During the opening week of the biennale, the Egyptian pavilion was widely popular and successfully attracted many visitors to it.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Expressing myself with words was never my strength; I always believed in the power of visual impressions to deliver my ideas. During my final two years as a student at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cairo, I suddenly felt trapped in the flatness of painting. Trying to escape that feeling, I first began experimenting with textured colors using a palette knife, gradually moving on to collage. I experimented with different materials, all the while searching for a more interesting surface to touch and feel.

When I discovered mosaic tesserae, my senses were enchanted. I was able to touch the details with my fingers. I no longer needed a pallet knife or a brush stroke to express myself and I began a new journey of artistic discovery. It set my mind and senses free to reconstruct something new, and to break and rearrange its parts as quick as the ideas that jumped to my head. Using mosaic tesserae in my artwork awoke the child spirit in me and gave me a playful sense of joy. 

In my earlier years of experimentation with mosaics, I mainly focused on abstract works of small sizes using colored glass, ceramic, pottery and marble pieces. Later on, a new evolutionary period in my practice began. I randomly collected primitive, natural materials I found in my path: shells from the beach, small pieces of wood, stones and metal, ancient Egyptian symbols of baboons and scarabs as well as fractured plates and mugs. Even though I had no idea what I would do with them at first, I was sure I would find a place for them in this world. With these interesting pieces of tesserae in mind, I moved on to create larger pieces of artwork that helped me to express my feelings faster, as if creating preliminary sketches, an expression of the ideas and thoughts that spontaneously came to my mind. 

My artwork is experimental – it is mainly divided into projects, every project comes after some researches and in-depth examination of the subject matter giving each project its own concept, character, technique and materials. The interaction between the project, the viewer and myself become a priority when creating my installations in order to give the work a living spirit. I’m also working on experimenting with video art, painting and sculpture, exploring projects that could express aspects of my mosaic work through movement and sound through visual solutions and language.