About
Born in 1988,
Lives and works in Cairo, Egypt.
Rania Atef is a visual artist and cultural practitioner whose work explores the idea of play as a method of research and a tool for reimagining everyday systems. Working across text, drawing, video, installation, and performance, she constructs environments and instructions that invite critical reflection through humor, repetition, and interaction.
Her practice examines the intersections of labor, care, domesticity, and authority, often tracing how economic and social structures shape individual and collective behavior. By engaging with these systems on both intimate and systemic levels, Atef reveals the often invisible mechanisms that govern routines, roles, and values - particularly those surrounding unpaid or feminized labor.
A strong thread of collectivity and shared agency runs through her work. She is a member of several collaborative initiatives, including “K-oh-llective” and a collective for working mothers in the arts, both of which challenge traditional production models by emphasizing mutual support, shared resources, and lived experience as forms of knowledge.
Atef's interest in verbal and visual language informs her approach to instruction-based and interactive work. She builds structures—physical and conceptual—that draw from both personal observation and inherited narratives, opening up spaces where participants can perform, modify, or disrupt familiar systems. Her practice seeks to expose what is embedded in the subconscious or routine, using play as a way to dismantle and reconfigure meaning.
Many of her works operate as inviting systems that rely on the involvement of the audience. By inviting participation, she invites the viewer to emphasize co-creation, negotiation, and shared authorship. In doing so, her work becomes a platform for experimenting within and beyond the art context.