Kamila Metwaly

Artistic Director MaerzMusik

Kamila Metwaly is a music journalist, electronic musician and curator based between Berlin and Cairo. From 2004 to 2009, Metwaly founded an independent arts and culture publication in Egypt and worked in radio and the independent film scene, maintaining a solid presence in Cairo’s cultural and activist scenes for many years. In 2017, Metwaly relocated to Berlin and joined SAVVY Contemporary, where she launched a long term curatorial project titled “Untraining the Ear Listening Sessions”, focusing on listening practices that challenge the epistemology of Western Euro-American music canon. Her practice engages with various formats weaving performative and installative tools to expand and re-engage with non-dominant and non-normative music and sound histories and cultures.

As a curator and music researcher, Metwaly has been working on various exhibition and performances projects, including: “What Has All This Got To Do With Coconuts And Rice: A Listening Exhibition on José Maceda” (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2017), “We Have Delivered Ourselves from the Tonal: Of, with, towards, on Julius Eastman” (SAVVY Contemporary/MaerzMusik – Festival for Time Issues, Berlin, 2018), “The Dog Done Gone Deaf: Exploring the Sonic Cosmologies of Halim El-Dabh” with Bonaventure Ndikung (Dak’Art Biennale, Senegal, 2018), and “Here History Began: Tracing the Re/Verberations of Halim El-Dabh” (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2020–2021). In 2021, she has been appointed as a guest research curator for Donaueschingen Global, a project of the Donaueschinger Musiktage to celebrate its 100th anniversary. Metwaly served as leading curator of MaerzMusik, programming its 2022 edition together with the artistic director Berno Odo Polzer. Following his departure, she took over as artistic director of the festival on 1 September. She will be in charge of the festival MaerzMusik in the years to come.