Egyptian artist Mai Refky holds a Bachelor's degree in painting from Helwan University’s Fine Arts in Cairo (1998), as well as her studies of Islamic art and architecture at AUC (1999-2000). She also holds a Traditional Islamic Arts and Crafts Diploma from Jameel House of Traditional Arts in Cairo (2013 - 2015). Her work explores the relationship between the human form and eclectic patterns from her surroundings. These elements are layered like a dynamic collage, as she combines figure-drawings in pencil and charcoal with segments of patterns in vivid oil paints on canvas. In her latest solo, Retraced.. at Zamalek Art Gallery (2018), Refky explored harmony, contrast and duality between figures and patterns. Depicted in pencil and charcoal, the figures are like sketches from different viewpoints, layered and layered to be several moments at once. The patterns are freed from symbolic meaning or cliché philosophical interpretations. Instead, the arrangement of the figures mimics the language of patterns. They are units that can be rotated, repeated or mirrored, disassembled or reconnected, like a visual puzzle to be unraveled. Refky’s work is like a study of all possible relations between figures and patterns. Her process is academic as it is playful, realized over extended periods of time and exposed to all the different energies she approaches it with. A process that builds on the visual memoir of her Transient Chronicles (2013) at Cairo's 6 Contemporary Arts gallery, a body of work realized between Egypt and Turkey as she attended the Maumau Art Residency in Istanbul. In addition to several other solos in Egypt, Refky also exhibited in Germany (2009), and in Turkey (2012). Between 2010 and 2015 she joined workshops, attended residences, and participated in group exhibitions. In recent years her work was part of the 26th Alexandria Biennale for Mediterranean countries (2014), The Bridge travelling exhibition by Caravan Arts (2015), and Salon du Caire at the Palace of Arts (2016), among others. Group exhibitions have further taken her work beyond Egypt, to be part of shows in Italy, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Croatia, Malesia, Qatar, Dubai, and Lebanon. She received awards from the Youth Salon, La Société des Amis des Beaux Arts, as well as the Ministry of Culture’s Grant for Devotion. Refky’s work is in the public collections of Egypt's Museum of Modern Art, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Croatia’s Museum of the City of Vukovar.