Available to work on assignment
︎ daniahany8@gmail.com
︎ @daniahany_
︎ @onemorefold
About
Dania Hany is a Cairo based artist and book maker working with analogue photography, installations and book arts. Her work explores themes of identity, materiality, space, repetition and rhythm. Engaging experimental techniques with personal narratives and exploring possibilities of tracing oral history and retracing narratives from personal archives.
In 2021, she started one more fold a project dedicated to learning the craft of book binding where she experiments with different forms of book making and paper works. This project grew into a space for experimentation, self-publishing, and collaborating with artists in different disciplines.
︎Cairo, Egypt
ONLINE MENTIONS
The British Journal of Photography
IGNANT
Witness - World Press Photo
Filtergrade
CLIENTS
Drosos Foundation
Eklego Design
Startup Guide
The Danish Institute for Dialogue
CiC - Contemporary Image Collective
Inca&Co
Artist Statement
My practice explores the intersection between the personal and the collective. Engaging personal stories with larger narratives, to find parallels between the spaces we inhabit and our lived experience. Seeing how personal stories can ground our understanding of themes such as belonging, identity and rootedness as well as larger events in history. Exploring such themes through one medium–photography– at early stages of my practice made me feel confined. So my practice shifted towards a multi-disciplinary approach, where I branched out from photography to book arts, weaving, installations, paper arts and audio-visual.
In exploring these mediums I grew an interest in the notion of repetition and rhythm. Seeking out patterns in the everyday is how my mind functions and finds ease. I am drawn to processes of repetition, transformation and re-contextualisation. My installations often take on a sculptural form, engaging with space and scale in ways that invite physical interaction and playfulness. This same notion extends to the work. Whether it’s in paper folding–constructing structures through the same repeated action of folding paper–in weaving, exploring different patterns through the same technique of weaving–or in video art–honing in on the rhythm of the water waves to guide the viewer on a mediative visual journey that allows for a feeling of ease to swell.
I’m also interested in expanding the boundaries of a material, exploring it beyond its conventional uses. Namely in book arts, I’m interested in the notion of the artist book as an object or a medium in itself. I’ve been studying the different ways a book can be read, interacted with, have a sculptural aspect to it, but most of all be playful. I’m working on a guidebook –work in progress– for artist books that helps artists explore different ways of constructing a book.
In the start of 2024 I started the photo-book dummy and the artist book workshops –alongside my work as an Assistant Lecturer–. As a way to open up my practice more to explore designing artist books in collaboration with artists who had their project at a production stage. I’m interested in continuing with this type of work that allows space for collaboration, while also give me more space to explore the potentials of a book as a medium as well as self-publishing. In 2023 I started self publishing my own zines, and participated in the last two edition of Cairo Art Book Fair, as well as Polycopies Paris 2024 as part of Aka Tawla Collective.
My practice explores the intersection between the personal and the collective. Engaging personal stories with larger narratives, to find parallels between the spaces we inhabit and our lived experience. Seeing how personal stories can ground our understanding of themes such as belonging, identity and rootedness as well as larger events in history. Exploring such themes through one medium–photography– at early stages of my practice made me feel confined. So my practice shifted towards a multi-disciplinary approach, where I branched out from photography to book arts, weaving, installations, paper arts and audio-visual.
In exploring these mediums I grew an interest in the notion of repetition and rhythm. Seeking out patterns in the everyday is how my mind functions and finds ease. I am drawn to processes of repetition, transformation and re-contextualisation. My installations often take on a sculptural form, engaging with space and scale in ways that invite physical interaction and playfulness. This same notion extends to the work. Whether it’s in paper folding–constructing structures through the same repeated action of folding paper–in weaving, exploring different patterns through the same technique of weaving–or in video art–honing in on the rhythm of the water waves to guide the viewer on a mediative visual journey that allows for a feeling of ease to swell.
I’m also interested in expanding the boundaries of a material, exploring it beyond its conventional uses. Namely in book arts, I’m interested in the notion of the artist book as an object or a medium in itself. I’ve been studying the different ways a book can be read, interacted with, have a sculptural aspect to it, but most of all be playful. I’m working on a guidebook –work in progress– for artist books that helps artists explore different ways of constructing a book.
In the start of 2024 I started the photo-book dummy and the artist book workshops –alongside my work as an Assistant Lecturer–. As a way to open up my practice more to explore designing artist books in collaboration with artists who had their project at a production stage. I’m interested in continuing with this type of work that allows space for collaboration, while also give me more space to explore the potentials of a book as a medium as well as self-publishing. In 2023 I started self publishing my own zines, and participated in the last two edition of Cairo Art Book Fair, as well as Polycopies Paris 2024 as part of Aka Tawla Collective.
GRANTS & SCHOLARSHIPS
AFAC - Arab Documentary Photography Program, 2019
ISSP - Photography & The World 2019
Tandem Scholarship for ISSP, 2019
Prince Claus Foundation - Mobility Grant, 2019
ART BOOK FAIRS PARTICIPATION
Cairo Art Book Fair, Cairo, Egypt 2024
Polycopies, Paris, France 2024
Cairo Art Book Fair, Cairo, Egypt 2023
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
An Expression of Absence, Magnum Foundation & Bronx Documentary Centre, New York, USA 2022
Photography and The World Group Exhibition - ISSP, Zaļenieki, Latvia, 2019
Memories - LoosenArt Gallery, Rome, Italy, 2018
She Tells - Soma Art Gallery, Cairo, Egypt, 2018
Supermarket - Stockholm Independent Art Fair, Stockholm, Sweden, 2017
Roznama - Medrar in collaboration with CiC (Contemporary Image Collective), Awarded by CiC, 2015
Women’s Association, in collaboration with Al-Qomra Photographic Collective, 201526th Youth Salon, Qasr El-Fenoun, 2015