Red Spot

Red Spot is a solo exhibition by the Egyptian artist Aliaa Elgready at Gallery Misr, 4A Ibn Zinky Street, Zamalek, Cairo. It opens on Sunday 11 October 2026 at 6pm and runs until 27 October. Al-Ahram reports that the works are made from fabric and thread, worked by stitching, together with what the report calls material accumulations of the image. The gallery is open Saturday to Thursday, 11am to 8pm, and closed on Friday.

Mohamed Talaat, who founded Gallery Misr, frames Red Spot around one mark and the way people's view of it shifts. It first appears in an empty space and draws curiosity and pleasure: one person takes it for a flower, another for a small sun. As it spreads and becomes familiar, it is given meaning, value and authority, and by the time its nature is clear, those who watched it have been drawn into it. Al-Ahram gives the exhibition's central question as: when does what we see turn into what we become?

Al-Ahram's report draws out a paradox in her stitching: a stitch closes the gap between two edges, but only by puncturing the cloth. Each stitch is therefore both the mark of an injury and a deliberate act of joining. The report ties the fabric, thread and material accumulations of the image to memory, fragility and recovery. It also links them to the meeting point between inner life and the marks that experience leaves on body and awareness.

Elgready was born in 1968. Her practice spans installation, video installation, painting and jewellery, and since 2021 it has centred on fabric, needle and thread. Gallery Misr showed her solo exhibitions A Journey Through Time in 2021 and Re-Envision in 2023. In November 2025 it presented her embroidered canvas roundels The First Scene and The Last Scene at Abu Dhabi Art, set with red discs and long fringes of thread. In 2013 she co-founded the Gudran Association for Art and Development, which works with women in marginalised communities. In 1995 she received the installation prize of the 5th Cairo Biennale.