Anthology 2026: Summer Collection

The 2025/26 season at Safarkhan was a special one in several respects, and our third Anthology series brings together the full gamut of not just the very best of what art lovers enjoyed this past season, but also as is customary, a glimpse into what is to come not only in our upcoming season but also in terms of budding new talents whose exploits we are keen to bring to light. Anthology 2026 will begin in early June and run throughout the summer months, with a semi-rotational basis for the artworks on display, as the collection is refreshed halfway through its duration ending in mid September of this year. This summer’s collection is headlined by some of our marquee resident artists, namely those who featured with solo exhibitions this season; Ibrahim Khatab, Ashraf El Zamzami, Katherine Bakhoum, Neama El Sanhoury, Kinda Adly and Omar Abdel Zaher. These are complemented by showings from some of our resident artists due to feature in next season’s exciting calendar; Sarkis Tossoonian, Alfonse Louis, Karim Abd Elmalak and Ahmed Saber, as well as the welcome return to the fold of several established and veteran artists in the form of Mohamed Abla, Mohammed Monaiseer and Amal Nasr. The rest of the collection is tied together by works from up and coming talents, namely Tasneem El Meshad, Mohamed Hassan, Yasmine Hassan, Mohamed Hussein, Ahmed Yousry and Salah Boutros, while foreign Safarkhan resident artists Carole Baines and Elric Miault, from Australia and France respectively, complete this year’s explosive Anthology edition. Overall this collection is a variegated musing on the current state of domestic contemporary art spanning a multitude of mediums, styles and subject matters, together they constitute the pinnacle of contemporary Egyptian painting and sculpture, and the promise of what art lovers will be treated to in the near future.

Highlights of the collection include star name Ibrahim Khatab’s layered and chemically-treated distorted abstract figuratism of lions and lotus, Mohamed Abla’s shimmering collaged rendition of a cactus bouquet, Mohammed Monaiseer’s intriguing entomological illustration of a butterfly, and a stellar example of Ashraf El Zamzami’s art brut brand of abstracted figurative painting that would be at home in the company of some of the greats of the European expressionist school. Karim Abd Elmalak’s angelic heroin warrior figure is adorned in gleaming gold armor and costume, a nod to his latest collection slated for next season. Katherine Bakhoum celebrates the wondrous sea- and skyscapes of the tempestuous coast of her home in Brittany in northern France, while Omar Abdel Zaher’s quaint yet powerfully emotive Nubianesque expressionism venerates the simple pleasures and sanctity of rural communitarian life in the Egyptian south. Neama El Sanhoury’s woven and embellished tapestry shroud stands alone in its compositional makeup, bridging the past with the present through the limitless threads of fabric and textiles, and we see Kinda Adly’s art veer into a more hyper-abstracted realm of pattern and pigment. Ahmed Saber’s striking Egypto-surrealism is again featured, and Alexandrian sculpting duo Alfonse Louis and Sarkis Tossoonian demonstrate their mastery in manipulation of wood and bronze respectively, with the former’s dazzling breadth of material composition encompassing metals, mosaics, glass, painting and more. Lastly, we see works that exhibit a variety of mediums in the form of photographic, calligraphic, metallic dust, and adhesive resin from a cadre of artists whose exploits we are thrilled to be bringing you much more of in the coming years.