COMEX-ARC is a non-profit organisation based in Paris and active across the world. It is driven by a transnational collective of artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners whose trajectories span Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Global South diaspora.
Our collective brings together artistic practice, social science research, and field-based experience, allowing us to design projects that are both intellectually rigorous and deeply grounded in lived realities.
We develop projects that respond to pressing contemporary issues such as migration, identity, memory, and belonging as lived realities. Our distinction lies in our ability to bridge artistic practice with critical research, grounding creation in ethical reflection, field-based knowledge, and community-led processes.
The founder Névyne Alexandra Zeineldin has developed her research and curatorial practice through sustained collaboration with, and under the direction of internationally recognised scholars and researchers affiliated with institutions such as Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris Descartes, Science Po Paris, INALCO Paris, Hugo Observatory, CEFREPA, Pontifical Urban University, NYU Abu Dhabi, King’s College, Toronto Metropolitan University.
This trajectory informs COMEX-ARC’s strong methodological grounding and its commitment to research-informed cultural practice.
Beyond individual roles, we function as a horizontal collective.
Our diversity of disciplines, geographies, and lived experiences allows us to approach cultural projects with nuance, sensitivity, and critical depth.
Exhibitions
From April to May 2023, the abandoned paper mill Cal Xerta (Catalunya) became a vibrant meeting place for artists and citizens through Tahrir – The Thousand and One Voices of Hope, an exhibition by Egyptian photographer and activist Adel Wassily. His images of the 2011 Tahrir Square uprising resonated strongly with European audiences, echoing movements such as 15-M, Occupy, Nuit Debout, #MeToo, and Black Lives Matter.
Following its success, the exhibition was re-presented at the 14th-century Claustre de Sant Francesc in Vilafranca del Penedès (Sept–Oct 2023), alongside new street-art murals by international artists, immersive audiovisual installations, and public discussions.
Together, these exhibitions affirmed Tahrir and global civic struggles as part of a shared Mediterranean and European memory, blending photography, street art, sound, and collective participation into a powerful civic laboratory.
Immersive Residency in Papermaking, Art & Research.
This month-long residency, developed with Territori d’ArT and the Capellades Paper Museum, invited artists to explore papermaking as both material practice and research-based creation. Combining ancestral techniques, contemporary experimentation, and critical inquiry, participants worked with handmade paper, natural pigments, printmaking, and mixed media while developing their own projects with ongoing mentorship.
Hosted across heritage studios, museum workshops, libraries, and historical houses, the programme also integrated writing workshops, academic talks, and seminars linking art with social sciences. The residency concluded with a public exhibition at Cal Xerta, presenting the works created during this immersive experience.
Creative & Scholarly Research / Knowledge Production
COMEX-ARC develops a research and editorial practice that bridges scholarly inquiry, artistic creation, and lived experience. Our work, collectively and individually, is grounded in participatory and field-based research, combining qualitative methodologies, critical theory, and artistic experimentation to produce knowledge that is both rigorous and socially engaged. We regularly contributes to international conferences, policy dialogues, and academic forums in the fields of migration studies, cultural policy, sociology, anthropology, and political science, including collaborations with institutions such as the Sorbonne (Paris), King’s College, University of Liège, Loyola University Chicago, Pontifical Urbaniana University, and international research centres.
This research is accompanied by continuous academic writing and publication, including peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, research reports, and policy papers addressing migration, identity, cultural governance, artistic engagement, and social inclusion.
We contribute to collective editorial projects such as Imagining Collective Futures, notably Creating Alternative Futures: Cooperative Initiatives in Egypt, and to publications released by academic publishers such as Brill and Mondes Arabes, as well as institutional reports produced for organisations including the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Alongside this, projects such as Cooking Sunshine explore food and artistic practices as sites of memory, care, and
transmission, engaging Arab food heritage as an embodied cultural and social archive.
In the art world, COMEX-ARC has produced and contributed to more than twenty booklets, catalogues, and editorial publications
accompanying artists’ projects, exhibitions, and research-based residencies. Conceived as tools for transmission, these publications document artistic processes, contextualise works within broader social and political frameworks, and amplify artists’ voices through critical essays, interviews, and visual narratives. By positioning research as an applied, collective, and accessible practice, COMEX-ARC transforms knowledge production into a tool for empowerment, dialogue, and social change, ensuring that research circulates beyond academic spaces and remains rooted in the realities of artists and communities.
