I, Mamdouh (Mido) Ahmed Abdel Salam, son of Egyptian emigrants, lived up to the age of 17 in the midst of the rich and very multi-cultural city of Kuwait until 27. March 1974. My favourite subjects at school were art and music. Little else interested me except for the fact that I already knew I wanted to live my life independently and free.

  In 1991, when I visited my relatives in Alexandria, Egypt, the Gulf War broke out and made it impossible for me to return to my family in Kuwait. In 1993, my parents, my sister and my brother had to return to Egypt, leaving all our possessions and belongings behind. I found myself alone in Cairo, a city with millions of inhabitants, trying to survive. I earned my living as a dancer in various theatres and video-clips. Around this time I began to paint black and white pictures with ball point writers, expressing predominantly pain and fear, which probably summed up my life at that time.

Fortunately in 1995 I met Sandra and two years later we got married. With the birth of our first daughter Amira I began painting in colour. For the first time I used acrylics and painted pictures with enormous dimensions, intensive colours and strong effects. The subjects are today predominantly of the merrier kind. With the birth of our second daughter Omayma more and more comic figures flowed into the pictures.

Since 1998 we live as a happy and very grateful family in Dahab, a small village in the Sinai Desert by the Red Sea in Egypt. It was in the first year living here that Sandra developed her urge to experiment with colours.

Since 1999 we both have worked actively as freelance artists. Together we rented a small shop on the beach in Dahab and from there we sell our arts and crafts such as key rings, decorations, unusual mobiles, decorative mirrors, along with my coloured and black and white pictures. We often use materials found locally in Dahab, such as scrap iron, pieces of metal, plastics, glass . . . simply any kind of recyclable "rubbish".

Once a year we fly all together to Switzerland and offer our goods for sale in unusual places like exhibitions, Open Airs etc. For the last three years we have also regularly visited markets.

• Vernissage & Exhibition Kaserne Winterthur November 1999
• Vernissage & Exhibition Rickenbach (BL), Rest. Blume Okt. 2000
• Exhibition Farb- und Klangladen Tabea, Bremgarten, winter 2000
• Vernissage & Exhibition Rest. Parterre, Luzern, July 2001
• Exhibition Restaurant Bellevue, Morschach, spring 2002
• Vernissage & Exhibition Forsthaus Zürich, June 2002
• Vernissage & Exhibition Rest. Parterre, Luzern, July 2002
• Vernissage & Exhibition in Alexandria, Egypt, winter 2002
• Exhibition in Kreatives/Biblario, Brunnen (SZ), summer 2003
• Vernissage & Exhibition Rest. Parterre, Luzern, July & August 2003
• Vernissage & Exhibition Rest. Blume, Rickenbach BL, Dec. 2003
• Vernissage & Exhibition County hospital Schwyz, Aug.-Sept. 2003