The Grand Egyptian Museum to House Modern Art Curated by TAM Gallery

It’s strange, standing at the edge of the Giza Plateau, watching history fold into the present. The pyramids cast their timeless shadow, and across the glass façade of the Grand Egyptian Museum, the reflection of a new Egypt shimmers back: layered, restless, alive. As the museum finally opens its doors, it’s not just ancient relics, it’s not just ancient relics being unveiled. Amid the golden light and global attention, contemporary Egyptian art is quietly taking its place in the story. TAM Gallery, one of Cairo’s most influential creative spaces by artist Lina Mowafy, was chosen to curate the artworks displayed at the ceremony—over a hundred pieces from across the country, spanning generations, mediums, and moods. The selection hangs in quiet conversation with the antiquities. There was no attempt to compete with history, only to exist alongside it. You can see it in Alaa Abul Hamd’s still, sculptural figures that seem carved out of silence; in Mohamed El Sharkawy’s glimmering gold-leaf scenes of village life, where folklore brushes against abstraction; in Yassin Harraz’s vivid textures that feel like Cairo’s chaos distilled onto canvas. Even in Lina Mowafy’s own pieces, meditative and abstract, there’s a sense of movement between eras, between what’s remembered and what’s being reimagined. Mowafy, who founded TAM Gallery in 2012, has always built bridges between artists and audiences, between what’s considered “fine art” and what simply feels true. Over the years, her gallery has given hundreds of artists a stage that feels both accessible and ambitious. So it makes sense that TAM was invited into this moment, to be part of the contemporary conversation. The Grand Egyptian Museum, in all its global glory, may hold the weight of five thousand years, but local art, in this context, becomes a reminder that Egypt’s story isn’t finished. It’s still being painted, layered, and told. The tools might be slightly different but the instinct is the same: to make meaning out of time.