All That Glitters Is Not Gold

All That Glitters Is Not Gold is a solo exhibition by Osama Ehab at Mashrabia Gallery of Contemporary Art in downtown Cairo, from 13 September to 8 October 2026. It is the artist's second solo exhibition at the gallery.

The exhibition brings together sixty-four works in acrylic on printed photographs and twenty-three ceramic installation pieces. Only a few of the photographs are Ehab's own. He spent the better part of a year going through two decades of web articles and social media posts for images of the Egyptian street. Among them are a boy hanging upside down from the hand straps of a Metro car, a man asleep on the pavement, the Cairo Monorail under construction. His interventions are painted in gold acrylic, and some faces are blotted out with paint or water smudges. Ehab placed the works in gilded frames.

The ceramics were made by the artist Omar El Gazar in collaboration with Ehab. They are hyper-realistic replicas of discarded Crocs, soda cans, water bottles and yoghurt cups, sprayed with gold paint and set on stands built from hundreds of cans that Ehab collected and compressed. The project began with Cairo's recyclers and scavengers. Al-Ahram Weekly describes the show as "shedding light on the lives of the scavengers whose bodies and spirits have become inseparable from the relentless cycle of recycling". Ehab told CairoScene that "this isn't an awareness project."

Ehab is from Sharabeya in Cairo and graduated from the Faculty of Art Education. The exhibition was conceived around the time of his graduation. Unable to find work in his field, he joined his brother's detergent store, while some of his friends turned to collecting aluminium cans to earn money. The gallery is directed by Stefania Angarano.