Growing up in Cairo, Yara Mekawei studied art education, later teaching and then moving into practices that draw from social history, Arabic and African philosophy, Sufi poetry, textual myths and the lived rhythms of cities. Her methods often involve translating Arabic letters, poems or philosophical texts (especially from the Sufi tradition) into numeric or coded forms that become the score for her compositions. She works with field recordings, architectural theory, sculptural or visual material, and both analogue and digital sound technologies to tease out how sound shapes identity, resonance, spiritual and temporal experience – especially within North East African contexts. Femininity, silence, and collective resonance emerge subtly across her work, not as just declarations, but as quiet undercurrents.

Mekawei founded Radio Submarine to trace the flow of sound across North African cities, using water as both metaphor and connective tissue. Her installations and performances shift scale and media, encompassing sculptures, sound-installations, immersive multi-channel works that often emphasize what is unsaid: silence, female presence, mythic or shared heritage. Projects like Holy 204 use 3D printed resonating structures together with sound codes drawn from Sufi texts to make the past audible and present, asking how spiritual philosophies and poetic mythologies can be reimagined beyond exoticism, as part of contemporary sonic practice.

• 658, by Yara Mekawei

• 658, by Yara Mekawei