Mohamed Banawy
Mohamed Banawy is an Egyptian visual artist whose practice repositions mosaic as a contemporary language of perception. Based in Cairo, where he also lectures at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan University, Banawy constructs geometric and abstract compositions that draw from aerial perspectives of landscape, architecture, and cultural memory.
A graduate of Helwan University (BFA, 2000), Banawy later obtained an MA examining the relationship between Pharaonic and African American mural painting (2009), followed by a PhD in Philosophy of Art (2015). This academic trajectory informs a practice grounded in historical inquiry while remaining formally experimental.
For Banawy, mosaic is not merely technique but worldview. The fragmentation inherent in the medium mirrors how he interprets space assembled, layered, and restructured through calibrated units. Working across oil, watercolor, pastel, stained glass, clay, and mosaic, he integrates material disciplines to construct surfaces that oscillate between architectural order and painterly fluidity.
Recurring aerial viewpoints define much of his visual language. Landscapes appear mapped rather than depicted, reduced into geometric systems that suggest cultivated fields, urban grids, and sedimented histories. These abstractions are rooted in Egyptian cultural identity, yet they avoid literal representation. Instead, Banawy distills heritage into structural rhythm color becomes terrain; tesserae become topography.
His works have been exhibited widely in Egypt and internationally, including participation in the Egyptian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2013), Primo Simposio Internazionale del Mosaico at the Egyptian Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (2015), MNWR (Saudi Arabia), and major contemporary art platforms in Cairo. His works are held in public collections including the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art, the Ministry of Culture, and the Egyptian Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
Through the synthesis of mosaic discipline and abstract cartography, Banawy positions the surface as a site of reconstructionwhere fragments converge into coherent visual systems, and cultural memory is reassembled through structure and light.