Artist Bio:
Amanda Kerdahi is a multidisciplinary artist working with sound, video, installation, and performance to examine object-based visual culture through the lens of a queer Egyptian-American perspective. Her work explores the tensions between coveted and discarded possessions, drawing parallels to personal relationships while serving as metaphors for migration and visibility.
Working between Houston and Cairo, Kerdahi creates mixed media installations informed by her community and ecosystem. Her projects involve participatory and site-specific elements, such as: ‘Filtered Conversations at Round Table’, where she invited Egyptian women to gather, eat, drink, and engage in open dialogue; ‘100 Conversations’, one-on-one performances involving hand-rolled cigarettes shared in private conversations with female smokers; and ‘Yishrab’, assemblages of accumulated debris as evidence of intimate experiences.
Kerdahi has exhibited internationally and has received notable grants, including The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (2014) and a Creative Capital Award (2023) for her work with Tankugbe Incubation Lab. In 2018, she co-curated Topophilia, a video art exhibition featuring 16 international artists in an abandoned farmhouse in Nees, Denmark.
Beyond her visual and installation work, Kerdahi organizes and DJs events in Cairo and Houston. She co-founded Benefsigy Studio, a five-room art space in downtown Cairo, and organized Pop Up on the Nile, a series of women-centered dance parties on feluccas—popular motorboats on the Nile—where she served as resident DJ. These events featured an eclectic mix of diasporic sounds and multilingual music, creating inclusive and dynamic spaces for movement and cultural exchange. In Houston, she co-organizes Mesaytara, all-female, Arabic-centered dance night.
Kerdahi holds a BFA in Digital Media and a BS in Psychology from the University of Houston, as well as an MFA in Creative Practice from the University of Plymouth, UK.
Artist Statement:
I am currently developing two bodies of work that combine research and material exploration. The first focuses on interviews with Egyptian elders who immigrated to the U.S. between 1960 and 1970. This includes my mother, who immigrated in 1969, and my second cousin. These conversations inform the creation of sculptural objects connected to migration stories and contribute to a publicly accessible online archive. Given today’s political climate, these stories remain urgent.
The second body of work explores fictional artifacts from a speculative version of Texas. In this alternate universe, Texas has surpassed the zenith of capitalist fueled greed and has been ravaged by war. TBDHyperTexas is a working title for a body of work I use to explore questions like: What might the artifacts we leave behind tell future generations about who we were? In this world, kitschy figurines and decorative household objects become distorted by their environment, embodying the values of a society obsessed with wealth, status, and stockpiling. Hybrid creatures appear frequently. Mythologized animals such as crocodiles and sharks symbolize survival and predatory consumption. Elements like green and off-white stains, counterfeit patterns, and even embedded RFID chips, reference currency, legitimacy and surveillance, highlighting how money itself is designed to appear authoritative.
The project uses greenware slip-cast ceramic sculptures—unfired and unglazed. This process aligns with the work’s themes of impermanence, collapse, and extraction.
Both projects will culminate in an installation incorporating sculpture and potentially an interactive experience. Whether personal artifacts from migration stories or fictional relics from a speculative future, both projects carry meaning about the systems that produce them.
