🎨 TAM Gallery launched Artists of Tomorrow in 2015 when the Egyptian contemporary art scene looked a lot different. By co-founder Lina Mowafy's own account, the art scene was a closed circle of elite artists and elite collectors with little visibility and no norms.

EnterpriseAM sat down with TAM co-founder and gallery director Lina Mowafy for an insider look at the program that helped launch the careers of some of Egypt’s best-known up-and-coming artists.

Mowafy, who is herself an artist and a 2015 Artists of Tomorrow alumna, tells us that the idea behind the program was simple: pick 10-15 emerging artists each year, back them with TAM’s platform, and wager that the market would follow. A decade later, the wager appears to have paid off. The program’s 10th edition was held on 12 May at the Grand Egyptian Museum’s (GEM) Glass Court, a venue that doubled as a statement. “We wanted that juxtaposition of contemporary and ancient,” Mowafy tells EnterpriseAM, “and the artists loved displaying their work next to the work of their grandfathers.”

Over 100 alumni from nine previous cohorts showed new work in a chronological retrospective, alongside the debut of the Class of 2026. They included well-known artists such as Mohamed El Damarawy, Mohamed Rabie, Klay Kassem, and Alaa Abu Elhamd. Mowafy estimates that upward of 80% of Artists of Tomorrow alumni are sustaining full-time, thriving careers as working artists.

The selection criteria

Artists of Tomorrow now receives thousands of applications a year, up from a far smaller pool when the program launched with roughly 40 artists on TAM’s roster. The criteria are a mix of the qualitative and the commercial: candidates must be academically trained, technically consistent, and innovative. “They have to present an element of renewal, a new voice, medium, or philosophy. And we also look for people who have the character to grow and expand,” Mowafy says.

The less obvious part of the selection process is the data. TAM runs an online gallery, three physical locations, and a year-round exhibition calendar. That operation generates purchasing data — who’s asking about whom, which pieces are moving, and which artists are drawing repeat interest. Mowafy says that in more than 90% of cases, the gallery has already tested demand for an artist before selecting them for the program. “We don't guess in the dark,” she says.

What appreciation looks like

Mowafy doesn't have a single statistical figure for portfolio-wide appreciation, but the anecdotal evidence is telling. Artists from the 2015 cohort like El Damarawy and Rabie, who were selling work at EGP 5-6k 10 years ago, are now pricing in the hundreds of thousands, Mowafy tells us. Even artists selected as recently as 2022 have seen prices climb sharply. “Everyone has appreciated,” Mowafy says — including artists presented only two years ago.

The program’s track record has created a self-reinforcing dynamic. According to Mowafy, being named an Artist of Tomorrow now functions as a market signal: “other galleries begin booking the selected artists before the exhibition even opens.” Mowafy compares it to a seal of approval of sorts.

TAM now represents more than 500 artists, holds an inventory of over 20k pieces, and operates gallery spaces in Abu Rawash, Gouna, and the North Coast. The gallery also runs a corporate art consultancy — launched in 2018 — that has placed work in hotels, banks, office buildings, and residential developments. According to Mowafy, a commission for a Waldorf Astoria property in Heliopolis, where TAM pushed back against a London design team’s preference for generic contemporary art in favour of locally rooted work, helped the hotel snag a Forbes Travel Guide award. “We’re very excited about this arm of the business because it creates a parallel revenue stream for artists through large-scale commissions that didn’t exist a decade ago.”

Making art accessible

“We are seeing more and more first-time buyers, and we love that. It’s part of our mission to hand-hold buyers and teach them everything that there is to know. When a client comes in and says, ‘I don’t know much about art,’ that’s when my eyes sparkle,” says Mowafy. “I love seeing them develop their taste, figure out what speaks to them, and start connecting emotionally with Egyptian art.”

This year’s Artists of Tomorrow financial partner was the high-end financing platform Ulter by Valu. They offered attendees financing of up to 60 months with no down payment, a first for the Egyptian art market. “There are specialized art financing companies that exist in mature markets. We don’t have those yet, but this is a start. The availability of financing removes a barrier, particularly for young, first-time buyers, and it’s [mutually beneficial] for the artist, the gallery, and the collector.”

Art as an asset class

TAM has operated a resale boutique since 2013 for collectors looking to sell work from their collections. The secondary market in Egypt runs primarily through galleries: a buyer who wants to exit a position returns to the gallery that sold the piece, which maintains a list of collectors interested in that artist.

Growing pains

The growth of the market has not been frictionless. Mowafy points to a lack of regulation as one of the main structural challenges. She explains that sometimes unqualified intermediaries enter the market, inflating prices for young artists with no commercial basis. A young artist might be told by an informal dealer with wealthy contacts that their work is worth multiples of its market price, distorting the artist’s expectations and the pricing landscape.

Institutionalization in the form of accreditation or a regulatory framework could address the problem: “We need to establish baseline standards for who can operate as a gallery or art dealer and how pricing should work,” says Mowafy. What is certain is that the demand side of the equation is shifting fast, and Egypt’s art market infrastructure needs to keep pace to truly build an asset class.