Chant Avedissian was born in Egypt, in 1951, the son of Armenian refugees who fled war and genocide. Avedissian left Egypt in the 1970s to study at Montreal’s School of Art and Design in Canada, then went on to study in Paris’ École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. He graduated in 1980 and moved back to Egypt.

Today Avedissian is best-known for his stencilled Pop Art portraits of famous Egyptians Icons from the 1950s and 1960s. His body of work engages the viewer with images of iconic figures in Egyptian history such as Oum Koulthoum and Princess Fawzia, traditional Pharaonic iconography and art of the 1950s and 1960s. Avedissian’s interests in folk art, Sufi poetry, Zen principles and aestheticism are evident in his creations. Today his works can be found in numerous museums and institutions namely The Mathaf, Qatar and The British Museum, London.  

“The imagery of popular entertainment has been brilliantly appropriated by the renowned Egyptian artist Chant Avedissian, whose images of the great stars are made with stencils based on old photographs. His identification with Arab nationalism became more intense in 1991, as he powerlessly watched the events of the Gulf War unfold. This led to the creation of more than two hundred nostalgic images of aspects of Egyptian culture, in which the country’s singers and actors played an important role.”

Eigner, Saeb. Art of the Middle East: Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World and Iran. London: Merrell, 2015, p 91.