IBA Conversations: Tarek Abou El Fetouh to moderate upcoming “IBA Conversations: Biennials for the Local Audience”

Curator Tarek Abou El Fetouh

IBA Conversations: Biennials for the Local Audience

June 25, 2021
12:00pm – 1:30pm (London)

We are extremely honoured to have with us, for the last IBA Conversation before our summer break Brussels based curator Tarek Abou El Fethou as moderator. His experience developed in over two decades of working in a variety of institutional settings and across different geographies as curator but also initiators of festivals and support structures such as Mophradat made him an ideal discussion partner of our two invited guests: Christine Thome and Bose Krishnamachari.

Tarek Abou El Fetouh is an independent curator born in Cairo, lives and works in Brussels.

Tarek studied architecture in Cairo where he started his career as an art director and theatre scenographer.  He researched and developed the traditional Egyptian tents techniques. Built more than twenty-three different designs of tents that hosted different performances for several independent theatre groups in various locations in Egypt.

From 2000 to 2005 Abou El Fetouh worked on designing and re-habilitating abandoned or misused buildings for use as cultural venues. These spaces included the Garage Theatre in Alexandria, Collectif 12 in Paris, Windows Theatre in El-Minia, The House in Amman, The Factory Space in the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, Ness El Fen in Tunisia and the Geneina Theatre in Cairo.

His curatorial work started when he joined the curatorial team of the Amman International Theatre Festival, Amman (1996 -2000); It’s Happening in the Garage, Alexandria; DisOrientation, House of World Cultures, Berlin (2003);Windows (multidisciplinary festival of contemporary arts.) in Minia and Cairo (2004); Roaming Inner Landscapes, Alexandria (2004) and Sharjah biennale 2009 the annual performance event Durub Al Tawaya in Abu Dhabi (from 2013to 2017)

He initiated the Meeting Points -Festival of Contemporary Arts and curated the first four editions that took place in several cities in the Arab World, worked as the artistic directors of the event with curators, Frie Leysen for MP5 and Okwui Enwezor for MP6 and the Zagreb based collective WHW on MP7.

Abou El Fetouh curated the exhibition of Home Works 6 organized by Ashkal Alwan in Beirut 2013. The exhibition was selected in the 2013 top ten lists of Art Forum and curated the exhibition “Lest the Two Seas Meet” at MoMA Warsaw in 2015, “The time is out of joint” in Sharjah and Gwangju 2016 and “Captive of Love” in 2017 and “Rituals of Signs and Metamorphoses” in 2018 at the Red Brick Museum in Beijing.

Abou El Fetouh was recently appointed curator of visual arts for Expo2020 Dubai.

Abou El Fetouh is the founder (and director from 2002 till 2014) of the Young Arab Theatre Fund (YATF), a Brussels-based foundation working in the field of contemporary visual and performance arts since 2002 and renamed Mophradat recently.

We hope to see you numerous and interested on June 25th at 12pm London time!

Those who are interested in joining are asked to register here.

In order for a genuine and frank discussion to take place and due to the sensitivity of some of the subjects to be covered, these events will have limited availability with priority to be given to current members of IBA and those who are interested in joining.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@biennialassociation.org.