Mai Elwakil
Culture editor
Mai Elwakil is a writer based in Cairo. She graduated from the American University in Cairo (AUC) in 2006 with a major in Economics and a minor in Art and Business Administration. Elwakil has worked in development and corporate banking. Over the past six years, she has done volunteer and paid work with a number of cultural institutions including the AUC galleries, Townhouse Gallery and the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. She was assistant curator to Invisible Publics exhibition at the Townhouse Gallery in May 2010 and organizer of the Cairo Complaints Choir. Elwakil is also a team member at Medrar TV.
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This piece was written for Egypt Independent’s final weekly print edition, which was banned from going to press. We offer you our 50th and final edition here.
From street art to a kitsch 1970s film, books that capture the zeitgeist...
As they walked out from “I’m Nobody’s Shadow” onto the streets of the ancient city of Tunis, audiences couldn’t help but smile. The 20-minute long performance, shown in September as part of the Dream City biennale, was...
On one end of the concrete wall blocking Qasr al-Aini Street stands a small grocery store with a red façade. Like with other shops across downtown Cairo sales have gone down due to the stifling traffic brought about by the concrete barriers and...
Last June, a famous olive oil soap “fossil” from the brand Nabolsy Shahin was exhibited in a vitrine at the Gezira Art Center in Zamalek, along with its trademark carton box. A little note read that the “fossil” had been...
The Finance Ministry's recent proposal to rent out the country’s key monuments, including the pyramids in Giza, to fund the current deficit in state budget has outraged archaeologists, cultural activists and the Ministry of State of...
Almost every reader on the planet is familiar in some way with the epic “1,001 Nights.” We know of Sultan Shahryar, who, heartbroken by his wife’s infidelity, remarries every night only to kill his new bride at the first break of...
I barely knew Ahmed Basiony in person. I only got to meet him casually at exhibition openings around downtown or ran into him on the side street leading up to the Townhouse Gallery.
I did hear much about his artistic experiments, though, how...
Amro Selim is not the first Egyptian cartoonist, and he certainly does not want to be the last. In addition to his continuous creative outpouring, Selim has almost single-handedly paved the way for a new generation of cartoonists to blossom and rise...
Sadly, Sama Waly’s video installation in Photo Cairo 5 was removed before the show came to an end due to technical problems, but the eeriness it left those who got to see it persisted long after it had gone.
A looped video of Waly sitting...
Childish fear was the emotion that artist Noura Seif sought to evoke with “Boody,” a collection of drawings and sculptures installed in the back room of the Contemporary Image Collective’s exhibition space as part of PhotoCairo 5...
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