Hashem L Kelesh is an Egyptian visual artist working primarily with illustration. His practice is rooted in observing people—their habits, desires, contradictions, secrets, and the strange things they do when no one is watching.

Through drawing and image-making, Kelesh transforms these observations into scenes that can be humorous, absurd, uncomfortable, or unsettling. He is interested in the space between public behaviour and private instinct, and in what these small moments reveal about the ways people live and relate to one another.

His work also looks at human culture as something constantly shaped by place, tradition, and social rules. Cultures can appear completely different on the surface, yet beneath those differences, many of the same impulses, desires, fears, and behaviours remain. Illustration becomes a way for Kelesh to expose that tension—between what separates us and what makes us recognisably human.