Nadia Mounier (b. 1988, Cairo) is a visual artist working with photography and video. Her projects examine how images shape our understanding of intimacy, belonging, and social visibility. In recent years, she has expanded her practice beyond image-making to curatorial work and cultural management.
She is passionate about collaboration, collective work, and alternative arts education programs. She has been part of various art collectives interested in the city, image production, motherhood, and the politics of representation.
Her work has been exhibited at Museum Rietberg, Zurich (2019), and the Museum of Photography, Braunschweig (2012), PhotoCairo Festival, Cairo (2017), the 6th Marrakech Biennale (2016), and Bjecm Biennale the Mediterranean, Ancona (2015).
She was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (2018), and Braunschweig Projects at HBK, Braunschweig (2019).
She managed the Arts and Culture program at The Arab Digital Expression Foundation (ADEF) from 2023 to 2026, where she integrated creative programming with community engagement and youth empowerment.
In her open project Cairo Snaps, which began in 2012, she focuses on the concept of public space; non-private spaces, and spaces that are economically uninteresting. Her photos are characterized by the use of everyday objects within an atmosphere reflecting middle-class aesthetics and mentality.
“Going through “Cairo Snaps” is like roaming Cairo undisturbed, embracing the crowds and opening your heart and mind to its peculiarities, a brief change from the flood of sarcasm that overtakes our perception of the city. Mounir gently reacts to Egyptian popular culture, recording standard events without filters or additions, capturing the city’s random flavors and features and rendering its natural strangeness.” Mohamed Abdel Raouf, Mada Masr
In her recent works, Mounier investigates the pictorial representation of herself as a woman, and of the women closest to her, in both public and seemingly private contexts. Her long-term project entitled Was That Really You? Mounier uncovers an explanation of their shared status in both images and real life through the process of reviewing these images, moving them between different contexts, and deconstructing their aesthetics. With a particular interest in forms of self-dramatization as well as censorship, she constantly switches between the roles of image consumer and image producer. In a series of self-portraits, she channels the aspect of performativity that inevitably arises when having one’s image taken, no matter how ‘private’ the act. She comes full circle to arrive at a triadic intersection of her own relationship with photography, in which self-image and external perception are reflected in the motif of motherhood.