I am Dr. Karim tageldin, a visu­al artist and aca­d­e­m­ic liv­ing and work­ing in alexan­dria. I don’t view a paint­ing or a mur­al sim­ply as a sur­face for col­or; i see it as a “visu­al document”—an are­na for test­ing the com­plex rela­tion­ship between our deep artis­tic her­itage and the rapid leaps of con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy.

As a pro­fes­sor at the fac­ul­ty of fine arts, my artis­tic iden­ti­ty was forged in the space between the stu­dio and the lab. My ph.d. research on “the impact of tech­nol­o­gy on tem­pered col­ors” led me to a firm con­vic­tion: inno­va­tion doesn’t mean aban­don­ing the past, but rather redis­cov­er­ing it with the tools of the present. My pas­sion lies in that del­i­cate “chem­istry” that occurs when ancient paint­ing techniques—like tem­pera and work­ing on clay surfaces—meet dig­i­tal pro­cess­ing and mod­ern media.

In my prac­tice, the lines blur between the oil painter and the mural­ist. When i stand before a can­vas, i look for tex­ture and col­or depth that car­ry the imprint of the hand and the spir­it of the artist. When i shift to mon­u­men­tal murals—like my work at the abu qir sea­port and the olympic village—this vision trans­forms into a mas­sive archi­tec­tur­al lan­guage that speaks to the pub­lic and inter­acts with the sur­round­ing space.

My per­sona in my work is a reflec­tion of this care­ful bal­ance. I always strive to pro­duce art that holds the “tech­ni­cal grav­i­ty” of the ancients but speaks the lan­guage of the dig­i­tal age flu­ent­ly. Every brush­stroke, every sur­face treat­ment, is an attempt to answer one ques­tion: how can art be a bridge con­nect­ing our deep his­tor­i­cal roots with our accel­er­at­ing future?

This fusion is also what i try to instill in my stu­dents, empha­siz­ing that the con­tem­po­rary artist must be a researcher mas­ter­ing their tools, and a thinker with a vision that extends beyond the frame.