Biography

Aya Tarek is a painter, muralist, and creative director based in Alexandria, Egypt. Her practice investigates sacrifice as a cross-cultural structuring mechanism the question of what communities surrender in order to hold together, and who stands witness to that surrender. The paintings are large-scale oils: small human figures positioned against overwhelming systems, rendered in saturated reds and strategic absences. The witness is always present. The viewer is always implicated.

Tarek’s exhibitions and commissions include REDBULL at Mudec Milan; The Invisible Man in a Fluorescent Suit at USF Contemporary Art Museum, Florida; two editions of the Urban Art Biennale at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte (2015, 2019); Djerbahood, Galerie Itinerrance, Djerba; Urbain(es) at La Condition Publique, Roubaix; CityLeaks, Cologne; White Wall at Beirut Art Centre; Afreaka Festival, São Paulo; Shock Hazard at Sharjah Art Foundation; and the solo exhibition TOKEN at Kodak Passageway, Cairo.

In 2022, she began a collaboration with researchers at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science. The resulting project, Waking the Giants, developed with composer Simon Petermann, translated climate datasets into immersive three-channel video installation and was presented at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh.

She has produced editions at Graphicstudio, Tampa, and held residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation in Milan, and Pro Helvetia in Switzerland. Her work is published in the Djerbahood monograph (Albin Michel), the Urban Art Biennale catalogue (Wunderhorn), Walls of Freedom, and Revolution Graffiti.

Tarek founded Alexandria’s first street art collective in 2008, featured in the film Microphone (dir. Ahmed Abdallah, 2010), and spoke at the Fast Company Middle East Innovation by Design Summit (2025).

Laureate of the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture (2024). She lives and works in Alexandria.