Nazir Tanbouli started drawing and painting at the tender age of three and has never stopped. He studied art and design at the School of Fine Art, Alexandria University (1989 – 1994), and worked as a painter, muralist, illustrator and graphic designer before moving to the UK in 2002.
In 2010 he was awarded the MFA from Camberwell College of Arts, the University of the Arts London, where he studied book art and printmaking. He was awarded, from the same university, the Creative Enterprise award 2012 for co-founding and managing the artist-run space Studio 75 London.
Currently, he lives and works in Cairo.
Tanbouli’s work is narrative, biographical, communicative, and often humorous. Both characters and places in his work are dream-like renderings of all the people he knows and all the places he traveled to, yet his works often contain many global themes and symbols which make them both non culturally specific and widely appealing. He has been exhibiting his work since 1990, with exhibitions in Egypt, UK, USA, Italy, Spain, Russia, Germany, and Dubai. His works are held in many public and private collections are the world.
