3 – 9 OCTOBER 2026
OPENING
Saturday 3 October, 6–9 pm
‘DO-MYSTIC UNI-VERSE AT THE CLINIC’ is a seven-day intervention responding to the clinic space and is a collaboration between Walid Elsawi and Hana Elhaddad.
Characterized by its absurdity and matter-of-factness, Elsawi’s oeuvre has linearly progressed across media, commencing with his university education in oil painting (2005–2010), and moving to drawing (2008–2020), video (2011–2018), text-based art (2011 – 2026) to his most recent body of work: his Instagram reels and stories (2019–) which comprise found, animated, Instagram GIFs in the foreground, and found, AI-generated imagery or digital drawings by the artist in the background. Each post is accompanied by sound or music from Instagram’s music library and is uploaded by Elsawi to his Instagram account once a day.
‘DO-MYSTIC UNI-VERSE AT THE CLINIC’ brings together two early works by Elsawi, alongside a new editioned work produced for the exhibition. Do-Mystic Uni-Verse (2012) is a silent stop-motion video of nine vignettes, showing a series of ceramic antiques and other decorative trinkets from the artist’s home circling and eclipsing one another, accompanied by invented statements.
On view for the first time, Untitled (2010) is one of fourteen works on canvas produced as part of Elsawi’s graduation project for his BFA in Painting from Alexandria University. Demarcated by their scarcity, Elsawi’s paintings anchor his practice, which, on a technical level, is imbued with painterliness and, on a conceptual level, is characterized by an inquiry into the space one creates while filling a hole.
Walid Elsawi is a visual and conceptual artist who makes quirky, peculiar meta-art. He uses language in a funny way and creates unsettling yet beautifully eerie videos. He’s also one hell of a painter, though his paintings don’t seem to get the love they deserve. Luckily for him, he does not give a fuck about that. He’s been busting his ass daily, creating Instagram reels non-stop since 2019—and when I say non-stop, I mean non-stop. He’d appreciate it much more if you just checked out the work itself instead of reading this bla bla bla.
Hana Elhaddad is interested in contemporary art, which she also writes about.
ADDRESS & OPENING HOURS
115 Abdul Aziz Al Saud Street, Al Manial Al Gharbi, Old Egypt, Cairo, Egypt
Open 6–9 pm.
FOLLOW
@baarrrrraa
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