MAHA MAAMOUN’s videos and photographs address the form and function of images that are found in mainstream culture. Her work acts as a lens through which we see familiar images in novel and insightful ways. She does that by making subtle interventions in photographic material that she captures on camera or borrows from various sources. Through an unusual crop, a seamless edit, an odd juxtaposition, an incongruent photomontage, a staged remake, Maamoun shakes up our expectations and toys with our perception.

Maamoun’s approach keeps a balance between what is studied and what is intuitive, leaving room for the incidental to play itself out. She freely mines the public domain for high and low brow images, respectively making videos that have consisted of YouTube footage of material shot live on mobile phone cameras during the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution, excerpts from bootleg copies of popular Egyptian films from the 1950s to the present and a remake of a single iconic image lifted from an experimental French film dubbed with a futuristic account of a different place.

With a keen eye for the absurd and a dark sense of humor, Maamoun’s work pulls on emotional, psychological and cerebral strings. She has been known to reflect on generic and overused national symbols and the ways in which they have been appropriated to construct personal narratives and collective histories. Since 2007, she has completed a succession of projects that take as their starting point the Pyramids of Giza as a visual and literary image.

Working primarily in photography and video, MAHA MAAMOUN’s work has been presented by many institutions worldwide, including Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; MoMA, New York; ICP, New York; New Museum, New York; MuHKA, Antwerp; MATHAF – Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Beirut Art Center, Beirut; Makan, Amman; Steirischer Herbst, Graz; Witte de With, Rotterdam; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; and Haus der Kunst, Munich.

Maamoun’s solo exhibitions include The Law of Existence, Sursock Museum, Beirut (2017); Like Milking a Stone, Rosa Santos Gallery, Valencia; The Night of Counting the Years, Fridericianum, Kassel (2014); and Lingering in Vicinity, Gypsum, Cairo. Her work has also been shown in biennials and festivals, including Singapore Biennale 2025; Shanghai Biennial 14th, Jakarta Biennial 2021, Transmediale, Berlin; 64th Berlinale; Sharjah Biennial 10; 9th Gwangju Biennale; Bamako 03; and 6th Dak’art Biennial.

In addition to her art practice, she has curated and collaborated on various curatorial project. She is a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CIC), an independent non-profit space for art and culture founded in Cairo in 2004. Maamoun also co-founded Kayfa ta, a publishing initiative that uses the popular form of how-to manuals as books situated between the technical and the reflective. Under the umbrella of Kayfa ta, she co-curated How to publish, Diriyah Biennale, How to maneuver, Warehouse421, Abu Dhabi, How to Reappear, MMAG Foundation, Amman; and Beirut Art Center, Beirut (2019).

Her works are held in private and public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Deutsche Bank; Bonnefantenmuseum; MuHKA; Sharjah Art Foundation; Barjeel Art Foundation; FRAC Poitou-Charentes; FRAC Bretagne; and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She lives and works in Cairo.