Ahmed Shawky was born in 1989 in Ismailia, Egypt. He is an artist and writer. Graduated from the Faculty of Art Education at Cairo’s Helwan University in 2011, he works as co-director of MHWLN (a research group devoted to researching and reflecting on the history of contemporary art in Egypt).

Through his solo exhibition “An Object Resembling an Artwork” at the Townhouse Gallery in 2017, Ahmed Shawky Hassan first drew the viewer into the gallery, the studio, or the museum hall then he invited them to look carefully at the world of meaning-construction that surrounds art. In the end, all of the effective elements - the curator, the artist, and the viewer - are complicit in the preconceived assumptions about the space and the artwork.

Recent awards and grants include Pro-Helvetia’s Research Trip for the visual arts program, Switzerland 2018. Visual Arts grant of AFAC, 2017. The official award of the “Institut Francais/Cite international des arts” residency program, France, 2017.

About his work:
Shawky is currently working on the second chapter from his long term project An Object Resembling an Artwork. Through this project, Shawky engages with the audience’s awareness of the necessity for the artwork right now, through narrating the extent of power exerted by the artist, the gallerists and the curators when displaying the work