Tasneem Sarkez

(b. 2002, Portland, USA)

Sarkez reconsiders modes of identification, collection and archiving. Her works urge the viewer to obtain a sense of refuge within cultural materiality, drawing attention to one’s proximity to it. Through extensive research, and the creation of her own archive, she develops her own translational abstraction of what it means to be Arab, debating the if’s and what’s of ‘Arabness’ as both a term and system of beliefs. She lives and works in New York where he is currently completing her BFA at NYU and will graduate in 2024.

Selected exhibitions include: ‘Saccharine Symbols’ - Rose Easton Gallery (London, UK 2023), ‘Me and you and me and’ - SADE Gallery (Los Angeles, 2023), ‘Beginner's Luck’ - Rosenberg Gallery (New York, 2023), ‘Transversal: Where We Come From and Where We Are Going’ - 80 WSE Gallery (New York, 2023), ‘Printing the Future’ - Diefirma Gallery (New York 2022).

In 2023 she received the Martin Wong Award from the Martin Wong Foundation. Her work is in the collection of the Thomas J. Watson Library in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.