Portrait Gabriella Demczuk Areej Ashhab
Areej Ashhab is an artist, researcher, and architect whose practice attends to land, material knowledge, and collective forms of learning in contexts shaped by structural enclosure and dispossession. Working across installation, moving image, writing, and performance, she approaches earth-based materials such as lime, soil, cactus, and rain as co-authors of narrative. Across her long-term collective work, she develops experimental field methods that combine counter-mapping and hands-on material experimentation through workshops, walks, and shared meals. Ashhab’s performance work extends her material-led practice through vocal and rhythmic reinterpretations of historical labor chants.
Areej Ashhab holds an MA from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London (2022), and was a participant at the Jan van Eyck Academie with the Al-Wah’at collective (2025). In 2026, Al-Wah’at Collective were part of Mediamatic’s artists in residency program Habits. As part of the 2026 ArtsLink International Fellowship, Framer Framed welcomed Areej Ashhab for a residency in Amsterdam, in collaboration with CEC ArtsLink and Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago.
