Nour Mobarak

The expressive capacity of living matter is a recurring theme in Nour Mobarak's work. In sculpture, performance, the moving image, poetry and music, the artist explores the way in which organic structure, primarily of mycelium and fungi, imitates that of language. Through her polymorphic compositions, the artist “wants to give birth to decomposition and negation”, as explained in an interview with Marie de Brugerolle in 2021. Using mycelium, Nour Mobarak transforms matter from an inert state into living, communicating objects capable of proliferating. The artist compares this phenomenon, albeit inverted, to Jacopo Peri and Ottavio Rinuccini's opera La Dafne, in which the goddess metamorphoses into a laurel tree to protect herself from Apollo's aggression. This myth gave rise to the laurel wreath, today a symbol of tourism and mass consumption in the streets of Athens.

Biography

Born in 1985 in Cairo, Nour Mobarak lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work has been shown at Rodeo Gallery in London in 2023 and 2017, Le Bureau in New York in 2023, MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge in 2022, Amant in Brooklyn in 2022, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre in Riga in 2021, Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York in 2021 and 2019, Hakuna Matata Sculpture Garden in Los Angeles in 2020, and Cubitt Gallery in London in 2019. His performances have been presented, among others, at Quai 5160 in Verdun as part of the OK LÀ! program in 2023, at the Renaissance Society in Chicago in 2022, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego in 2020, at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2019, at LAXART in 2019, at Potts Gallery in Los Angeles in 2018, at Stadslimeit in Antwerp in 2016 and at Cambridge University in 2010. 

Recent exhibitions

2024	Déliquescence, group exhibition, Fonderie Darling, Montreal, CA Dafne Phono, solo exhibition, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (forthcoming)
2023	Gods’ Facsimiles, RODEO, London, UK Dafne Phono, RODEO at The Municipal Theatre of Piraeus, GR HumanIs, Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin, DE Throughline, Bureau, New York, NY Dj Travella + Cara Tolmie • Rian Treanor (Duo) + Nour Mobarak, performance, Counterflows Festival, Glasgow, UK OK LÀ!, performance, Quai 5160 - Maison de la culture de Verdun, Montreal, CA
2022	SIREN (somepoetics), Amant, Brooklyn, NY Dafne Phono, JOAN, Los Angeles, CA Symbionts: Contemporary Artists And The Biosphere, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA Intermissions: Nour Mobarak, performance, Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL