Biography

Aya Tarek (b. 1989, Alexandria) is a visual artist working across painting, murals, and installation, between the studio and public space. She examines what individuals sacrifice in order to be absorbed into collective life, and who stands witness. She situates isolated figures within three structures that organise social existence: religious ritual, the crowd, and economic precarity. The figures remain individuated within compositions that could easily subsume them, holding the viewer at the point where participation and coercion become difficult to distinguish.

Tarek is the laureate of the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture (2024). Her work is held in the collections of the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, and the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples.

Solo exhibitions include TOKEN, Kodak Passageway, Cairo (2021). Group exhibitions and commissions include From Muralism to Street Art: MUDEC Invasion, Mudec, Milan (2025); RSH Street Art Festival, Riyadh (2023); Urbain(es), La Condition Publique, Roubaix (2022); Oracle of Lies, Art d'Égypte, Cairo (2021), with Udo Prinsen; the Urban Art Biennale, UNESCO World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte, Völklingen (2019, 2015); Antigel Festival, Geneva (2018), commissioned to mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Afreaka Festival, São Paulo (2016); The Man in the Fluorescent Suit, USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa (2015); Djerbahood, Galerie Itinerrance, Djerba (2014); CityLeaks, Cologne (2013); White Wall, Beirut Art Center, Beirut (2012); and Shock Hazard, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (2010).

Waking the Giants, developed with composer Simon Petermann during a Pro Helvetia residency in Bern and in collaboration with researchers at ETH Zurich's Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, translated climate datasets into an immersive three-channel video installation. It was presented at Townhouse Factory, Cairo, and at COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh (2022).

She has held residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2019), and the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation, Milan (2010), and produced editions at Graphicstudio, Tampa (2017). Her work is published in the Djerbahood monograph (Albin Michel), the Urban Art Biennale catalogues (Wunderhorn, DCV), Walls of Freedom, and Revolution Graffiti. She appears in the film Microphone (dir. Ahmed Abdallah, 2010) and spoke at the Fast Company Middle East Innovation by Design Summit (2025).

Tarek holds a BFA in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Alexandria University, and founded Alexandria's first street art collective in 2008.