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About the Project
Mohieddine Ellabbad Personal Archive
Planning Grant
The project successfully surveyed and created an inventory of the archive of the prolific Egyptian artist, writer and bookmaker, Mohi Eldin Ellabbad (1940-2010). Ellabbad is one of the most prominent modernist Arab artists whose oeuvre helped shape the region’s artistic currents and intersected with its social, political and cultural history. His studio in Cairo, Egypt, houses an abundant archive that documents the artist’s work, process and experimentation, and indexes a generation of artists and writers with whom he worked.
The archive includes some of the best graphic design and illustration work of the 20th Century. Not just works done by Mohieddine Ellabbad, but his own collection of the works he owned from his contemporaries, including regional and international artists and designers.
Project Leads
- Mahmoud el Hossieny, Design Repository
- Ahmed Ellabbad, Independent researcher based in Egypt
Host Institution
Arab Fund for Arts and Culture
More Information
I find the idea of unfinished work to be emotionally charged with sadness, potential, and what could have been. In our time in the studio, we have seen first hand a few instances of unfinished work. That is, work that we know was never finished. For instance, we found this illustration of Alice in wonderland. In this image here, Ellabbad used this illustration for a postcard, but we also found traces of attempts to illustrate the whole story as part of a series of translated English novels he worked on. I just keep wondering, would this have been Ellabbad’s best work if it was ever finished? The sad part is that we will never know.