Mena El Shazly

Mena El Shazly, born in Giza, is an artist with bases in Cairo and Vancouver. She works with analogue video, embroidery and performance, alongside sculpture. Her pieces range from video works and stitched textiles to live screenings in which she performs on stage with her own films.

Her practice looks at presence and transcendence as shaped by internet culture and ancient ritual, and treats decay as a route to transformation and renewal. Hyperopia, a project supported by the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture in 2025, moves from the grids of Vancouver to the cell walls of plants. It draws on the Arabic text of the Crystalist Manifesto, printed in Al-Ayyam in 1976. Ballistics of a polite war, an experimental documentary in five vignettes, follows a tennis ball through the moment of impact.

She took a BA at the American University in Cairo in 2013 and an MFA at the School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University, in 2023. She held fellowships at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut in 2015 and at Diriyah Art Futures in 2026. In 2024 she was a finalist for the Philip B. Lind Prize and took part in The Lind Biennial at The Polygon Gallery in Vancouver. She is artistic director of the Cairo Video Festival, organised by Medrar.