Aisha Tidachan Abbassi is an artist, designer, and aspiring writer based between Houston and Tunis.
Since leaving the design industry to return to the arts, Aisha has worked as a project coordinator, artist-in-residence, workshop facilitator, and counselor in Tunis, collaboratively employing alternative forms of education and creative intervention to engage local youth and children.
Her artistic practice has sculptural and social emphases and employs mainly sérigraphie (silkscreen printing), geometric shapes, and language. Her work lies at the intersection of art, design, and civic action and is grounded in the themes of heritage and diaspora, art as social practice, and the making and breaking of patterns.
In her artistic and curatorial work, Aisha explores the creative potential of togetherness when contemporary and community arts converge. Her experience as a TASAWAR Curatorial Fellow further solidified her interest in artists and initiatives whose aesthetic practice is a tool for community-building in search of justice. Rather than attempting to define art, she seeks to discover its many uses and abilities in today’s context—where does it begin and end? What does art do? What can art and curation offer in the further development of individual awareness, collective identity, and a more equitable future?
FORMATION
Since 2019 | Tunis.tn | TASAWAR Curatorial Studios | GOETHE-INSTITUT Tunesien
2020 | Tunis.tn | Digital Shift: Artists’ Lab | INTERFERENCE International Light Art Project
2016 | Ithaca.NY.us | Cornell University | Bachelor of Fine Arts
1998 – 2003 | Kuwait City.kw | American School of Kuwait
BIO
Since 2016 | Graphic Design and Illustration
2019 | Tunis.tn | Artist-in-Residence | Collectif Creatif El Warcha
2018 | Tunis.tn | Jasmine Foundation | Project Coordinator, The City Is Ours
2018 | Moved to Tunis.tn
2012-2018 | Lived in New York, Vermont, Colorado, Texas
2003 | Moved to Houston.TX.us
1998 | Moved to Kuwait
1994 | Born in Houston.TX.us
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
202x (upcoming) | Tunis.tn | Mawjoudin Queer Film Festival
2020 | Tunis.tn | Digital Shift | INTERFERENCE International Light Art Project
2019 | Tunis.tn | Utopia 100 years Bauhaus | Dar Lasram | GOETHE-INSTITUT Tunesien
2016 | Ithaca.ny | Voodoo Mama Juju | John Hartell Gallery | [1]
2016 | Ithaca.ny | CCA BIENNIAL: Abject/Object Empathies | FLOSSA by Caroline Woolard | [2]
2015 | Ithaca.ny | Bookwork+Castwork | Tjaden Experimental Gallery | [3]
2015 | Ithaca.ny | NY2C15 | Olive Tjaden Gallery | [4]
LINKS
2020 | Tunis.tn | Ode to the Hafsia Fripes (blog) | El Warcha Collaborative Design Studio
2020 | Tunis.tn | Haya Bismillah (blog) | El Warcha Collaborative Design Studio
2019 | Fouchana.tn + Amsterdam.nl | The City Is Ours Website | Jasmine Foundation + FRAMER FRAMED
PHOTO
Photo courtesy of Kevin Villalobos | Houston.tx.usa | 2019
Aisha A Abbassi dressed in a traditional Cambodian costume called the “sampot.”
Costume courtesy of Leng Chou Abbassi.