Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Cairo, Egypt
Arts & Culture Program leader
2015 - 2016
To date ​Teaching Fellow 

Open Canvas

This course investigated alternative forms of knowledge through the experience of drawing and reading in an attempt to explore and re-define body-mind relations. Participants engaged in the act of drawing as a way to bridge body and mind. As they learned how to draw, they observed and evaluated not only the unfolding outcome on paper but also reflected upon a process of acquiring new forms of (body) knowledge. Accompanying theoretical texts and discussions further facilitated a process of self discovery by reflecting upon habitual and specific means of embracing knowledge. How do we learn? How do we know what we don’t know? Do you want to describe, explore, understand, discover or change something?
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More info on the CILAS website.

Selected Readings:

Jacques Rancière
The Emancipated Spectator

New Eyes, Old City

This course analysed the social fabric of Cairo and examined our relationship to the city from a personal perspective. The ambition of this course was to visually explore our everyday world, to think about what is visible and what is hidden in our environment. Our everyday world is made up of objects in urban life, which we navigate in our daily routines. The simple act of taking a photograph can open up a discourse on society and reveal our personal position within a culture. Does the everyday provide a platform for conformity, or is it a place where conformity is resisted? How do we daily negotiate our roles in a social system?
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More info on the CILAS website.

​Selected Readings:

Farha Ghana
Live and Die Like a Man

bell hooks
The Oppositional Gaze ​

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More info on the
CILAS website.

Mireille El Magrissy

2017 - 18

My Body is My Body

In collaboration with Sara Elkamel

​In this course, we use our bodies as a starting point for creative practice. We start off with the assumption that at some point in our lives, we have been exiled from our bodies — accidentally or by force. To bridge that assumed estrangement, we begin to probe our relationships to our physical bodies through employing both visual and writing tools. Students write and make art about, with, and perhaps on, their bodies.

This course promotes an interdisciplinary approach to creative inquiry and practice in the attempt to explore the notion of exile from one’s own body. Assigned theoretical texts are designed to inform the production of creative work, whereby discussion and feedback are a crucial part of the journey. We also be examining artwork and writing by local and international artists. We translate ideas back and forth between visual expression and written language, and we experiment with a range of practices including embodied writing, image-making ​and performance.

More info on the CILAS website.