Shayma Kamel (b. 1980) is an Egyptian painter who lives and works between Cairo and Beirut. She earned her BA in psychology from Ain Shams University in 2002 before pursuing a career in the visual arts. She began her artistic journey with a solo exhibition at Cairo Atelier in 2004.
Her work is centred on women and their challenges in Arab societies, particularly in Cairo. She regularly employs different mediums and techniques, a practice that serves as both the variable and the constant in her artistic production. Shayma captures the essence of the Egyptian persona through large-scale paintings that simultaneously haunt and enchant. This contradiction—the tension between haunting and enchantment—forms the central theme and conceptual backbone of her work.
Shayma has held solo exhibitions at prominent venues including Arcade Gallery in Cairo (2025), Mission Gallery in Beirut (2020), Mashrabia Gallery in Cairo (2014, 2011), Villa Strauli in Winterthur, Switzerland (2013), Knauer Gallery at West Chester University in Pennsylvania (2010), and Cairo Atelier (2004). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions across Egypt, Lebanon, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United States.
Through her powerful portrayals of women and her exploration of psychological and social contradictions, Shayma Kamel continues to be a distinctive voice in contemporary Egyptian and Arab art.
