Born in Cairo in 1948, Huda Lutfi is both a visual artist and a cultural historian living and working in Cairo. She earned her Ph.D. in Arab Muslim cultural history from McGill University in Canada and is an associate professor of history at the American University in Cairo. Her training as a cultural historian has influenced her work as a visual artist, where she juxtaposes historical past and present, as well as traversing and fusing cultural boundaries. In her works, she references Egypt’s social, cultural, and popular artistic traditions, trying to integrate these into contemporary art practices. In her attempts to do so, she works with mixed media, used painting, text, collage, recycled photographs, found objects, assemblage, and installation. Since January 2011, a large part of Lutfi’s daily routine has been to follow the news. The works in her recent exhibition Cut and Paste – Huda Lutfi (2013), held at the Townhouse Factory Space, Cairo, reference the rich archive of images and texts she has collected since the January 25th revolution, as well as recent changes in the political context in Egypt.
Lutfi’s work has been exhibited in the Middle East, Europe, the United States, and Asia. Some of her group exhibitions are Hommage à Mustapha Hasnaoui (2013), Galerie Frédéric Moisan, Paris; Terms & Conditions (2013), Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Abu Dhabi Art Fair 2012, U.A.E.; Frieze Art Fair 2012, New York; and What is Happening Now? (2007), Palace of the Arts, Cairo. Her recent solo shows include Huda Lutfi: Twenty Years of Art (2011), Tache Art, Cairo; Making a Man out of Him (2010), Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; and Zan’it Al-Sittat (2008), The Third Line, Dubai, U.A.E. In 2012, The Third Line published Huda’s first monograph, Huda Lutfi: A 20 Years Retrospective Catalogue.
