DANA AWARTANI

Early Years and Background

Dana Awartani was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1987, to a Saudi mother and a Palestinian father. She grew up between Jeddah and her ancestral connections in the Levant, experiences that would later inform her sensitive engagement with heritage and place. Awartani studied fine art in London, earning her BFA at Central Saint Martins in 2009 and an MA at the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts (now The King’s Foundation) in 2011 to deepen her understanding of Islamic geometry and craftsmanship. She holds an Ijazah certificate, qualifying her to impart sacred Islamic arts.

Awartani currently lives and works between Jeddah and New York.

Dana Awartani Artworks

Dana Awartani’s art bridges the languages of ancient Islamic and Middle Eastern craft with pressing contemporary issues. Her practice spans painting, sculpture, site-specific installation, and performance. Awartani’s projects are known for reviving endangered craft traditions—such as creating hand-loomed textiles, natural dyes, and claywork—while meditating on themes of memory, gender, erasure, and collective trauma.

Her installation at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your broken bones, featured torn silk textiles dyed with healing herbs, referencing sites of cultural devastation. Previous key works, such as Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your broken bones as we stand here mourning (2019), explored sustainability and destruction through intricate embroidery and pigment alchemy.

More recently at Arnolfini, she showed her installation, Standing by the Ruins III (2025), which used materials and motifs specific to the Arab world to speak to collective loss and resilience. Specifically, the work, created with a collective of craftsmen from Riyadh who specialise in adobe earth restoration, rebuilds the intricate Ottoman-influenced floor design of what was one of the region’s oldest bathhouses, Gaza’s Hamam al-Sammara, now believed to have been destroyed by the ongoing war in Gaza.

Awartani also employs performance—such as in I Went Away and Forgot You... (2017), in which she ritualistically erased a patterned sand painting to reflect on disappearing cultural legacies.

Dana Awartani Awards, Public Commissions

Select awards, commissions and other accolades, in addition to her Venice appointment, include:

• Selected to present Standing by the Ruins, for the High Line Plinth, New York (2024).
• Shortlisted, Dia Al-Azzawi Prize for Public Art (2024)
• Shortlisted, Richard Mille Art Prize, Louvre Abu Dhabi (2022)
• Recipient, National Cultural Award, Saudi Ministry of Culture (2021)

Dana Awartani Exhibitions

Dana Awartani’s artwork has been featured in important solo and group exhibitions globally in significant museums and in leading galleries.

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Standing by the Ruins, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (2025)​
• Dana Awartani, Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg, Germany (2024)​
• Dana Awartani, Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide, Australia (2024)​
• The Silence Between Us, Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE (2018)​
• Detroit Affinities: Dana Awartani, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, USA (2017)​
• The Hidden Qualities of Quantities, Athr Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2015)​

Dana Awartani’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the following important events and institutions:

• Venice Biennale, Italy (2024)​
• Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2024)​
• 11th Asia Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia (2024)​
• Sharjah Biennial 15, Sharjah, UAE (2023)​
• Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France (2022)​
• Louvre Abu Dhabi Contemporary Exhibition, Abu Dhabi, UAE (2022)​
• Imagined Communities, Sesc Videobrasil Biennial, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2020)​
• An Instant Before the World, Rabat Biennale, Morocco (2019)​
• Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India (2018)​
• Jewish Museum, New York, USA (2016)​

To be kept up to date with upcoming exhibitions featuring Dana Awartani, follow them on Ocula. You can also view her exhibitions on Ocula.

Public Collections

Dana Awartani’s artworks are held in major international collections, including The Guggenheim (NY), British Museum, Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai), Sharjah Art Foundation, and Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Dana Awartani Website and Instagram

• Website: danaawartani.com
• Instagram: @danaawartanistudio

More Reading

Dana Awartani’s art and exhibitions have been featured in leading media such as The Art Newspaper, Designboom, and Lisson Gallery Magazine. Ocula wrote about the artist’s commission for New York’s Highline, and about her commission for Venice Biennale in 2024.

Dana Awartani FAQs

Ocula | 2025