Yasmine El Meleegy grew up watching her mother refuse to throw anything away. A broken cup or a smashed vase would be glued back together, piece by piece. Decades later, one porcelain cup from her mother’s collection, with a signature on its base, sent Yasmine down a five-year rabbit hole into the forgotten history of Egyptian sculptor Fathi Mahmoud.

And the cup was only the beginning. Since then, the Egyptian artist has continued to find stories in the most unexpected places, piecing together mosaics from broken plates, following ceramic painters across the Mediterranean, and even tracing the global politics of the tomato from the fields of Luxor to a museum in Pittsburgh. What connects these seemingly unrelated projects is her remarkable ability to find stories in things most of us wouldn't think to look at twice.

We spoke about growing up in a hotel in Sinai, the mother who taught her to love broken things, the people history tends to forget, and why even the most ordinary object deserves a closer look.

— How did your childhood and family background shape your interest in art?

— I think a lot of it comes down to the rather unusual way I grew up. In the mid-1980s, my father moved our family to Al-Arish, a small city on the Mediterranean coast of North Sinai. He had taken a job as a human resources manager for Oberoi, an Indian hospitality group that had opened a hotel there after the war.

My father had already travelled extensively for work, and I suppose it took a certain adventurous spirit to move his family to a place that, at the time, felt rather forgotten. My mother, meanwhile, was incredibly sociable. She seemed to know absolutely everyone in the city and became a real part of the local community. Even today, when we return to Al-Arish, people still tell us how much they loved her and how much they miss her.

So, quite literally, I grew up in a hotel. My siblings and I were surrounded by the most extraordinary mix of people — politicians, actors, travellers and guests arriving from all corners of the world. When I look through our family archive now, I find photographs of my father meeting all sorts of fascinating characters and attending events that were helping bring the city back to life.

But perhaps my earliest introduction to art came from my mother herself. She had this wonderfully creative side, always collecting the most unusual objects and making things with her hands, from books to beautiful, glittering costumes inspired by the belly dancers who performed at the hotel. I would copy the dancers and put on little shows for my family and friends.

I often say that my mother was the first collector I ever knew, and the first installation artist I ever met. She had an incredible eye for detail and a particular attachment to objects. If we broke a vase as children, she wouldn't simply throw it away. She would insist on gluing every piece back together. Looking at my own work now, I can certainly see where my fascination with objects and the idea of repairing things began.

Of course, the place itself had an enormous influence on me, too. From a very young age, I was exposed to different cultures, interiors, cuisines and ways of living. Even the hotel's design became part of my visual world. And just beyond its walls, there was this completely different landscape: desert, palm trees, farmland and the Mediterranean Sea. My mother would take us on little trips to Lake Bardawil to get fresh seafood. It was a rather extraordinary place to spend your childhood.

We eventually moved back to Cairo when I was about 12, but I think so much of who I am had already taken shape in Al-Arish. My artistic practice today is quite diverse, sometimes even a little all over the place, and I have never felt particularly comfortable putting a neat ending to a project. Most of my work remains ongoing, constantly evolving, and I suspect that openness comes from growing up in such an unpredictable, colourful environment.

— You initially studied sculpture before moving to painting, but your practice now spans installation, mosaics and restoration. How did this evolution happen?

— Actually, it happened the other way around! I started at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Zamalek, Cairo, studying sculpture. Getting into that school had always been a dream of mine, particularly because so many artists I admired had studied there.

The education was quite traditional, even conservative in its approach, especially when it came to sculpture. I sometimes found that a little restrictive, as I wanted more freedom to experiment. And while I have enormous appreciation for my teachers, after a few months in the sculpture department, I realised I was already quite comfortable working with three-dimensional forms. So I switched to painting, which I actually found much more challenging.

Over time, though, I found myself drawn back to physical objects. I have always been fascinated by the way they hold memories of people and things that are no longer there. Working with fragments, repairing what has been broken and giving objects a new form allowed me to explore those ideas in a much more tangible way. But that doesn't mean I ever left painting behind. In fact, I think my mosaic work brings the two together rather beautifully. When people visit my studio, they often point out how the fragments of broken plates resemble brushstrokes. And they are right — in a sense, I am painting with pieces of porcelain rather than a brush.

— Repairing things that can never be fully restored seems central to your work. Where did this fascination begin?

— It actually began about ten years ago, with something deeply personal. I was trying to repair a doll that my father had given to my mother, who had passed away. At the time, I was still grieving her loss, and the act of putting something broken back together carried an enormous emotional weight.

My relationship with repair has changed quite a lot since then. I am a mother myself now, and I experience grief and memory differently. Sometimes I reread interviews I gave years ago and realise just how much my understanding of the work has evolved.

But I still wouldn't say I have figured it all out. I am not necessarily interested in returning an object to its original, perfect state. I am more curious about what happens to it after destruction, what remains and what can never quite be recovered. Perhaps that is why I keep coming back to the subject. I suspect I will be exploring it for the rest of my life.

— That personal experience eventually became Rites of Passage, your first solo exhibition. What do you remember about creating it?

— I remember spending practically every day in the studio, working with wax and cement. They are two very different materials: wax is incredibly fragile, while cement is associated with construction and permanence. Combining them was technically challenging, but I was fascinated by that contrast.

I kept making casts of household objects, repeating the same process over and over. Yet no two pieces ever came out exactly alike. Some had missing parts, others had visible seams or imperfections. There was something almost ritualistic about it, which made sense because, at the time, I was using the work to process my grief.

The installation eventually became my first solo exhibition at Townhouse Factory in downtown Cairo. I even built a fountain out of wax, so when visitors entered, they could hear running water and smell the material. I wanted it to feel like an experience rather than simply a collection of objects.

I was absolutely terrified on opening day. It felt as though I had invited complete strangers into something incredibly private.

Almost ten years later, I found myself returning to the doll that had started it all, presenting it again at Frieze London. It wasn't something I had planned to revisit, but my gallerist encouraged me to bring it back. She was experiencing illness and loss herself, and I think that gave her a deeply personal understanding of the emotions behind the work.

Seeing it again was incredibly emotional, but for a different reason. This time, I could recognise how much of my artistic language had already been there from the beginning: the moulds, repetition, industrial materials, household objects and the physical process of making things. It felt like meeting an earlier version of myself.

— How did visitors respond to Rites of Passage?

— The exhibition ran for two months, and some people returned two or three times. Many recognised the household objects I had cast from my mother's collection — they had similar things in their own family homes. It made me realise that the work wasn't only about my personal loss, but also about collective memory.

And because the exhibition took place in downtown Cairo, which was undergoing extensive renovation at the time, the cement I used also connected the work to the changing city. What began as something deeply personal had suddenly become part of a much larger conversation about memory, loss and the places we leave behind.

— That interest in collective memory eventually led you to the Egyptian sculptor Fathi Mahmoud. How did you discover his work?

— Rather unexpectedly, through a porcelain cup in my mother's collection. I noticed that it was signed by Fathi Mahmoud, and I immediately became curious. I knew him as a sculptor responsible for many of the monumental public sculptures in Cairo and Alexandria, so why was his signature on something produced in a porcelain factory?

I started asking colleagues whether it could possibly be the same artist. It turned out that it was, but nobody seemed to know much about the connection between his monumental sculptures and these everyday objects. That little mystery was enough to send me down an entirely new path.

What began with a single cup turned into almost five years of research. I became fascinated by Mahmoud not only as an artist, but as a figure through whom I could explore the relationship between art, design and industry, particularly in Egypt during the 1940s and 1950s. His work opened up questions about industrialisation, nationalism and how the country's cultural identity was being shaped during that period.

But over time, the research became something much more personal. I found myself having imaginary conversations with Mahmoud, asking him questions and trying to understand his decisions. He became almost a mentor, a father figure, even a kind of love affair with someone I had never met, if that makes sense. And I find it rather beautiful that this whole relationship began with a cup my mother had kept. Even as my work moves towards broader questions of history and heritage, she somehow remains at the heart of it.

There is also something about Mahmoud's philosophy that really stayed with me. He had this wonderful slogan, Art for Millions, and I think that is exactly what I want to achieve. I want to make work that is layered and conceptually rich, but still speaks to people beyond the art world. To me, there is something quite magical about reaching a wider audience rather than creating art solely for the art market.

— Your recent solo exhibition, The Corrupting Sea, also grew out of your fascination with Fathi Mahmoud. How did that project begin?

— It is actually a long-term project that began in 2018, when I discovered that porcelain cup in my mother's collection. I became fascinated by how Mahmoud's legacy extended far beyond monumental sculpture — from public artworks across Cairo to everyday porcelain objects found in people's homes. He had this extraordinary ability to move between art, design and industry, and I wanted to understand that connection.

The problem was that very little had been written about him. His archive was largely inaccessible, and his work remained surprisingly understudied. So I began searching everywhere I could think of — private collections, official archives, old newspapers — trying to piece together his story.

Eventually, I approached his family, who continued his legacy through the porcelain factory. Mahmoud had passed away in the mid-1980s, but the business had grown into one of the largest manufacturers of its kind in the Middle East, exporting products internationally. I was fascinated by how his original vision had survived and developed through the generations.

At first, though, his family wasn't particularly enthusiastic about my research. I think they thought I was a slightly crazy woman who had become obsessed with their relative. I kept asking to visit the factory, see the archives and hear their stories, but for four years, they refused.

So I found another way to continue the conversation. I sat down at my laptop and began writing fictional letters to Mahmoud, weaving together my own experiences, fragments of his biography and questions about his forgotten legacy. Through these letters, I could also explore the history of Egyptian industrialisation, nationalism and the political climate of the Nasser era.

Eventually, I wrote thirteen letters. They became a book, which we published in February 2023 alongside my exhibition To Mend Is To Shatter at Gypsum Gallery. We designed it as a little tin box, almost like a box of chocolates, containing the book and its accompanying materials.

I had never written a book before, and I certainly didn't consider myself a writer, so the whole process was quite a challenge. But I still remember holding that first finished copy. It was a very special moment, especially knowing that the entire project had begun with a single cup from my mother's collection.

— Did his family ever come around to the project?

— Yes, and in the most wonderful way! For my exhibition To Mend Is To Shatter at Gypsum Gallery, I created ten small mosaic murals, reinterpreting Mahmoud's public monuments alongside images from my own family archive. It was also the beginning of my work with mosaics, almost a visual extension of the thirteen fictional letters I had written to him.

I invited his family to the opening, and to my surprise, they came. One of the family members arrived very early and ended up acquiring a large mural, which is now installed on the façade of their factory in Alexandria. He was incredibly moved by the book, too, and suddenly, after four years of trying to reach them, we connected.

And I don't mean just professionally. We became almost like family. I started visiting their home, having dinners with them and hearing stories I could never have found in an archive. It was quite magical.

As the company began opening stores in major Egyptian shopping centres, they commissioned me to design three of them. So now you can walk into a shop bearing Fathi Mahmoud's name and find my reinterpretations of the nationalist imagery from his murals incorporated into the space.

— So, coming back to The Corrupting Sea, how did your years of research into Mahmoud eventually lead to this particular exhibition in Istanbul?

— It actually began with an invitation from Ferda Art Platform, a relatively new gallery in Istanbul.

I wanted to create something special that would connect with the place itself. So I began researching the history of ceramic production in Turkey, particularly the craftspeople of İznik, and the connections between different communities across the Mediterranean.

For centuries, porcelain, ceramics and other objects travelled between Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Syria and beyond. But what fascinated me wasn't just the objects themselves. I wanted to understand the people who made them, the techniques they carried with them and how those traditions changed as they moved from one place to another.

I became particularly interested in the history of red glaze in İznik. It led me to a rather unexpected connection between ceramics, politics and the environment. During the Little Ice Age, changing conditions affected local industries, and some craftspeople shifted towards textile production while certain ceramic traditions gradually disappeared.

Then I started looking more closely at the painters themselves. I came across accounts of artisans licking the tips of their brushes to make them fine enough to paint those incredibly delicate flowers. I found that detail fascinating. We admire these beautiful objects in museums, but how often do we think about the hands that made them, or the conditions in which those people worked?

Until then, much of my research had focused on the political and industrial histories surrounding Fathi Mahmoud. But I realised I hadn't really explored the labour behind the objects themselves. I became interested in how ceramic painters and craftspeople moved around the Mediterranean, taking their knowledge to different places and influencing traditions in Greece, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere.

And that brought me back to red. I became almost obsessed with the colour, its history and its connection to ceramic production. Eventually, the exhibition took on this largely monochromatic red palette, which brought all those different stories together.

But something else happened during the process. For the first time, I felt comfortable moving beyond the direct reinterpretation of Mahmoud's murals and designs. Of course, Mahmoud is still there. His porcelain and his legacy remain part of the work, almost as though we are still collaborating. But I feel I am beginning to create my own visual language out of all these histories, rather than simply responding to his.

— One last project I would love to touch on is Red Gold. Tomatoes seem like quite an unexpected subject for an art project. How did it all begin?

— It actually began with my mother. When she was undergoing cancer treatment, we became very conscious of what she was eating, particularly with the growing popularity of organic produce in Egypt at the time.

That made me curious about where our food comes from. I became particularly interested in Egypt’s tomato industry.

I started researching agricultural policies, seeds and hybrid varieties, and eventually created these enormous tomato sculptures. They looked beautiful from the outside but were completely hollow, made from industrial materials such as wax, polyester and resin.

That was actually my first installation project, developed after I returned from studying multimedia installation in France in 2012. But then my practice moved towards other subjects, particularly my mother's collection, and I put the tomatoes aside for almost ten years.

— So what brought you back to tomatoes after all those years?

— Sun-dried tomatoes! I discovered this growing industry in southern Egypt and became fascinated by the whole process. Seeds arrive from abroad, tomatoes are grown and processed locally, and the finished product is exported again.

I spent around two years travelling to Luxor, meeting farmers and researching the industry. What interested me most was how something as ordinary as a tomato could reveal so much about labour, international trade and agricultural policy.

Then I was invited to present the project at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. During my research, I discovered the industry's connections to United States development programmes. And while I was working on the installation, United States assistance was abruptly halted.

That was a turning point. I returned to speak with the farmers and understand what had changed. Suddenly, the vulnerability of the industry wasn't just something I was researching. I was watching it unfold.

— And how did you translate all of that research into an installation?

— Originally, I had imagined working with polyester again, but I decided to use salt instead. I created a greenhouse-like structure inside the museum using around 250 cast salt tiles. We spent a month and a half making them!

The installation remained on view for a year, and the salt gradually dissolved. I loved that fragility because it reflected the uncertainty facing the farmers, particularly the women working in the industry, whose livelihoods depend on agricultural policies and international funding.

Visually, the panels also reminded me of fragments from an ancient Egyptian temple. I was inspired by the Botanical Garden at Karnak, where exotic plants were depicted on the walls. I found that connection beautiful because tomatoes themselves were once an unfamiliar crop in Egypt.

I also created a publication called Red and White Gold, inspired by agricultural reports and trade documents from the 1970s. It came in a vacuum-sealed package containing a tiny, hand-painted resin tomato.

— We have talked about so many projects, each opening up another chapter of your life and research. So, what is the next story you would like to explore?

— I want to return to the history of the Oberoi hotel in Al-Arish, where my father worked, and explore the lives of the people who made that place what it was. It is still an early-stage project, and I don't have an exhibition planned yet. But I am particularly interested in my father's working life, the hotel's history and the wider story of Al-Arish from the 1970s onwards.

It is a very sensitive subject because of the city's location in North Sinai, close to Gaza, and everything happening in the region today. I feel that this makes preserving its memories even more important.

I grew up surrounded by so many different people and stories in that hotel, and now I want to understand what happened to that world, what remains of it and what might disappear if nobody takes the time to document it. So perhaps, in a way, I am coming back to where everything started.