Sama Waly

Sama Waly completed her Masters of Fine Arts in Film, Video, New Media & Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her practice incorporates moving image, installation and performance art, and explores notions of hauntology, historiography, and a tension between order and chaos in urban and natural environments. Her work has been featured in various exhibitions in Cairo, Chicago and internationally. With a BA in Visual Arts and Arab & Islamic history from the American University in Cairo, she has worked with a range of cultural institutions in the fields of development, cinema, contemporary art and art history, and has published her writing in various online platforms. She is passionate about the history of culture in Egypt with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, her current essay, commissioned by MHWLN, is entitled "Pan-Arabism post-Nasser: Egypt and the Union of Arab Plastic Artists (1972-1978)". Since completing her masters, she developed an enthusiasm for advancing free, open access to knowledge as a fundamental right, and is grounding her daily practice as a researcher in this.