Alex Ayed

Alex Ayed’s itinerant practice encompasses sculpture, painting, photography, and sound. Working in response to the places through which he travels, he draws on local symbols, materials, and imaginaries to construct layered narratives. Ayed often introduces found or displaced objects into the exhibition space, not to isolate or fetishize them, but to trace the local and global histories they carry and connect them through broader webs of association. Described by curator Myriam Ben Salah as “the physical incarnations of an oral tradition,” his works examine the circulation and migration of objects and people across geography and historical time.

Alex Ayed (b. 1989, Strasbourg, France) currently lives and works aboard a boat, sailing across the Mediterranean and other oceans as part of an artistic and scientific research project. Recent solo exhibitions include presentations at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2023); Balice Hertling, Paris (2023, 2021, 2017); The Intermission, Athens (2022); Kunstverein Freiburg (2022); the Renaissance Society, Chicago, with Lydia Ourahmane (2021); B7L9 Art Station, Tunis (2019); and the Institute of Arab and Islamic Art, New York (2018). His work has also been presented at Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2024); Julia Stoschek Foundation, Düsseldorf (2024); Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial (2024); Biennale Gherdëina 9, Ortisei (2024); Frac Île-de-France, Paris (2024); the New Museum Triennial, New York (2021); and WIELS, Brussels (2020), among others.

Ayed graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2015.