Rania Atef

Lives and works in Cairo, Egypt

Artist statement

I am a visual artist, researcher, and cultural practitioner whose work explores play as a method of research and a tool for reimagining everyday systems. Working across text, drawing, video, installation, and performance, I construct environments, situations, and instructions that encourage critical reflection through humor, repetition, and interaction. My practice examines the intersections of labor, care, domesticity, and authority, tracing how patriarchal, economic, and social structures shape individual and collective behavior. I am particularly interested in how these structures extend between public and private life, regulating roles, relationships, and expectations within the home as well as beyond it. I often approach the domestic space as both a site of intimacy and a workplace, where forms of unpaid and feminized labor reproduce broader systems of power. By bringing domestic references, gestures, and materials into artistic contexts, I create a productive tension around what has become familiar, invisible, or taken for granted. I use an apparent simplicity, often combined with humor and play, to approach complex structures of power and make their effects tangible. My work asks how everyday routines and behaviors become normalized, and how they might be interrupted, negotiated, or reimagined. Collectivity and shared agency are central to my practice. I am a member of collaborative initiatives, including K-oh-llective and a collective for working mothers in the...

Artwork