Aliaa Elgready

Aliaa Elgready makes embroidered works on canvas in fabric and thread, among them circular pieces hung with long thread fringes. Stitched fabric has been the focus of her practice since 2021. An Egyptian artist born in 1968, she has also worked in installation, video installation, painting and jewellery.

Speaking to Al-Dostor about A Journey Through Time (2021), she described her turn to fabric, needle and thread as a new adventure with traditional materials. Re-Envision followed in 2023, and The First Scene and The Last Scene (2025) are embroidered canvas roundels set with red discs. Writing on Red Spot, Al-Ahram reads each stitch as both a wound and a decision to join, and links the works to memory, fragility and recovery. Gallery Misr presents her practice as a questioning of the assumptions that shape how people relate.

Since 1998 she has used art for social change. In 2013 she co-founded the Gudran Association for Art and Development, whose work centres on women in marginalised communities and on building their skills and creative participation. She received the installation prize of the 5th Cairo Biennale in 1995, a 1997 scholarship to the Egyptian Academy in Rome and the Library of Alexandria Prize in 2007. She works with Gallery Misr, Cairo, which took her work to Abu Dhabi Art in 2025.