Mohamed Abou Elnaga – is a multidisciplinary visual artist, art professor, curator and developer. Throughout his colorful career, Dr. Abouelnaga has created award winning art projects, and brought up new generation of young artists through his teaching and workshops. Born in the Egyptian city of Tanta, Dr. Abouelnaga graduated with honors in 1983 from the Faculty of Fine Art and completed a PhD in Philosophy of Art from Alexandria University in 1997. He was the first Middle Eastern artist to receive a grant from the Japan Foundation to study the arts of papermaking.
Abouelnaga has mounted several solo shows in Egypt and around the world that varied between painting, video and installation. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions. He was invited to represent Egypt in the Venice Biennial 2002 and received the First Prize of the Alexandria Biennial in 2001, and also was awarded first prize for his Video Art Cairo 11 from the Danube Video Art Festival in Austria. As a curator, Dr. Abouelnaga created the biggest and most successful Artist Book Biennial in the Alexandria Bibliotheca in 2002. Entitled Imagining the Book, it featured artists from different cultures, backgrounds and nationalities. In 2009, he was assigned by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture as the curator of the 25th Alexandria Biennial for Mediterranean Countries. Two years later, in 2011, he curated the Sharjah Children Art Biennial.
