Focus on: Aysha E Arar

Marhaba farasha (Hello butterfly), 2024
Song and lyrics composed by Aysha E Arar
Music by Sulafa Elyas & Ana Khalife
Video © Instant T Productions

Click here to watch the performance

« Aysha E Arar’s drawings immerse us in another world, underwater and amphibian. They represent what she calls “creatures without identity.” Bodies haunted by a love that precedes their being, these creatures merge into one another, shattering the boundaries of identity with lines crossing their tangled bodies. Our techniques of visual identification are disrupted by what looks like simple children’s drawings to hasty eyes. These are lines below the drawing itself. Bringing us back to an infra-perceptual state, we reencounter the sense of vision as it functioned before our brain could even identify bodies by attributing human properties to them. Blurring the boundary between humans and non-humans, E Arar invents a code that creates symbolical bridges between colors, natural elements and human beings. »

Aysha E Arar: An Amphibian Art
by Mohamed Amer Meziane & Anissa Touati

Aysha E Arar

Then it happens that love burns the body like gunpowder, and the sun scatters its threads to illuminate this world (2024)

pen on paper
20.5 × 28 cm (unframed)
37 × 29.3 cm (framed)
unique

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Aysha E Arar

I don’t have to get close, but I’m close, so close, can you feel me? (2024)

pen on paper
20.5 × 28 cm (unframed)
37 × 29.3 cm (framed)
unique

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Aysha E Arar

- Why did you come? - I want to connect. - Go! There will be no contact between us. (2024)

pen and charcoal on paper
20.5 × 28 cm (unframed)
37 × 29.3 cm (framed)
unique

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Aysha E Arar

My blue bird will never stop singing (2024)

pen on paper
20.5 × 28 cm (unframed)
37 × 29.3 cm (framed)
unique

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Aysha E Arar

He came to hunt the mermaid, but she caught him with one look (2024)

pen and charcoal on paper
28 × 20.5 cm (unframed)
29.3 × 37 cm (framed)
unique

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Aysha E Arar © Myriam Cohenca - © sans titre

Aysha E Arar is a Palestinian artist born in 1993. She received her BFA with honors from the HaMidrasha Faculty of Arts - Beit Berl College in 2018.

Current solo exhibitions include ‘Dear red bird, look at me in the eyes’ at Sans titre, Paris and ‘There was love, there was death, and there was you’ at Dvir Gallery, Paris. She has had solo exhibitions at 디스위켄드룸 ThisWeekendRoom, Seoul (May 2024); Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv & Brussels (2023); Beit HaGefen, Haifa (2023); Hayarkon 19, Tel Aviv (2022); Givat Haviva Art Gallery (2021).

Selected group exhibitions include: MO.CO. Panacée, Montpellier (upcoming); Sans titre, Paris (2024, 2022 & 2021); TAGELDIMDE / MIDDELGATE, Geel (2023); Edmond de Rothschild Center, Tel Aviv (2022); Umm al-Fahm Gallery (2022); Alfred Institute for Art and Culture, Tel Aviv (2021); Kultur Forum Dresden e.V., Dresden (2021); Albertinum Museum, Dresden (2021); Artura Gallery, Kfar Monash (2021); Balkont Gallery, Tel Aviv (2019); Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv (2018); Ethiopian Embassy, Tel Aviv (2017); Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv (2017); Tel Aviv Cinematheque, Tel Aviv (2016); Excellence Project of the Jewish Festival, Krakow (2016).

Aysha E Arar’s works are featured in the collections of significant institutions and museums, including Lafayette Anticipations - Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin (Paris, France) and SMAK - Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (Ghent, Belgium).