Hella Mewis has a degree in business administration and is a freelance curator and art manager living and working in Baghdad, Iraq since 2012.
In 2015, together with young Iraqi artists she founded the collective TARKIB, which organizes the annual TARKIB Baghdad Contemporary Arts Festival. Since 2017, the collective runs art center BAIT TARKIB and since 2018, has organized the group public space exhibition BAGHDAD WALK. Mewis is Tarkib‘s curator, artistic director, content editor and administrator. In 2014, she started her photo series ‘City Cartography’ in which she documents the architectural environment of the activities she is organising or attending. Her series are in black and white to underline the eternalness of the moment. She has been investigating Iraqi art since she began living in Baghdad. Her current research project is art in public spaces in Baghdad from 1921 until to the present which will culminate in an open-source map-based online archive. From 2013 to 2021, she worked as a freelance collaborator and German language teacher for the Goethe-Institut Iraq. She is the chairman of the German-based NGO EMCUE e.V. (Europe MENA Cultural Exchange).