Aya Bseiso

Aya Bseiso (b. Tunis, 1995) is based in Amman. Her practice relies heavily on research, text, and sampling of various archival materials. Aya is interested in experimenting with the various ways it is possible to engage, build relationships, and embed oneself in distant ecosystems—traveling between borders—by utilizing telepresence, simulating micro-climates or rendering landscapes that probe different futures. 

In her latest project, ‘In the usual order of things rivers run their course’ she looks at Wadi Gaza, a stream that has been diverted through a series of Israeli diversion dams, and currently polluted by sewage and agricultural waste due to the 15 year blockade of the Gaza Strip.  In 2020 she initiated Bahaleen with a group of fellow artists Noura Salem and Khalid Odeh, an artist-led research collective interested in researching artistic practice through an exploration of states of temporality.

Her work responds to the tensions, and potentials of moving between the role of artist and curator experimenting with the possibilities and potentials of artists to create the parameters of production, and exhibition of their work, collectively or individually. In addition to negotiating, understanding and experimenting with the relations between institutions, independent spaces, and artists.

Whether as part of her work at MMAG Foundation a contemporary art institution in Jordan, the collectives she is a part of, or her research projects, she seeks to engage in the search for, development of, and potentials of artistic and curatorial practice amidst the fluctuating socio-political context of the region.