The Corrupting Sea

Ferda Art Platform in Istanbul presents The Corrupting Sea, a solo exhibition by the Egyptian artist Yasmine El Meleegy. It runs from 18 September to 17 October 2026. It is her first solo show at the gallery and occupies the Main Hall. The exhibition gathers ten works dated 2026: seven mosaic panels built from broken porcelain and three watercolours on paper. The catalogue gives the materials of each panel as Marmox, porcelain and binding.

The porcelain was salvaged from a factory set up by Fathy Mahmoud, a sculptor of monumental public works and reliefs. El Meleegy's raw material is tableware and factory rejects from the second half of the twentieth century. She sorts the broken pieces first. Over months of work, kneeling on the floor, she fits the fragments into figures, portraits and still lifes. Each panel is assembled from separate sections with the joins left visible, and a single image can run over four, six or more of them. Recurring images include pomegranate seeds, lemon slices, shells and sea creatures, all found on the factory's own wares as well. Red glaze runs through the series, and the gallery links it to Iznik and to earth, fired clay and the Mediterranean shore. The largest work, Unsettled Ground, measures 300 by 245 cm and shows two rabbits or hares in red mosaic.

The title is taken from The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (2000) by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell. As the gallery summarises it, the book treats the Mediterranean as a patchwork of distinct small regions that stayed in touch through interrupted exchange. The gallery sees the same logic in the panels, where every shard still carries the decoration and glaze of the household object it came from. The catalogue sets the work beside older floor mosaics, including the third-century Skeleton Mosaic from ancient Antiocheia, held in the Hatay Archaeology Museum. No curator is named.

Born in 1991, El Meleegy lives and works in Cairo; she studied painting at Helwan University, finishing in 2013. Her solo exhibition Red Gold opened at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh in 2025. She was shortlisted for the seventh Future Generation Art Prize and showed in its exhibition at PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv, in 2024. Her work is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan.