TASNEEM SARKEZ

Background

Tasneem Sarkez was born in 2002 in Portland, Oregon, to parents who immigrated from Libya to the United States in the 1970s. Growing up as an Arab American in a post-September 11 landscape profoundly shaped her relationship to identity and culture, themes that underpin her early practice.

Sarkez studied at New York University, where she completed a BFA in 2024. She is based in Brooklyn, New York, and has enjoyed representation at Rose Easton Gallery in London.

Tasneem Sarkez Artworks and Style

Tasneem Sarkez works across painting, sculpture, photography, video, and print to create pieces united by their marriage of pop visuals and potent sociopolitical symbolism.

Sarkez’s earlier practice centred on photography, zines, and risograph printing. Her 2022 publication Ayonha, a risograph-printed artist’s book of collages and photographs, drew from family imagery and internet memes to revisit her identity as a young Arab American. The book was acquired by the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, an early institutional milestone for the artist. During this period, she also exhibited in group presentations at spaces including 80 WSE Gallery and Diefirma Gallery in New York, and Rose Easton Gallery in London.

From 2024, Sarkez’s work expanded into painting and sculpture, drawing on what she terms ‘algorithmic still lifes’—compositions that mimic the visual logic of internet algorithms and viral imagery while embedding culturally specific signifiers from Arab and American life. The car, for example—a symbol of status, mobility, and identity—has been a recurring subject, with Sarkez exploring the customisations made to privately owned vehicles as reflections of their drivers’ aspirations, politics, and cultural affiliations.

Her 2025 solo exhibition White-Knuckle at Rose Easton in London featured six paintings alongside sculptural works including perfume-oil bottles sourced from Brooklyn suppliers and relabelled with playful, culturally charged names. A second solo presentation, Just For You, followed at ROMANCE gallery in Pittsburgh in 2025.​

Sarkez’s practice is driven by an ongoing effort to archive what she calls ‘the Arab present’—a refusal of mythmaking that confines Arab identity to the past. Elements of autobiography combine with broader mainstream signifiers, often drawing on American media, Arabic text, and internet aesthetics, in an exploration of diaspora, nostalgia, decoloniality, and kitsch. A residency at Selma Feriani Gallery in La Goulette, Tunisia, is forthcoming in 2026.

Exhibitions of Tasneem Sarkez

Tasneem Sarkez has exhibited at galleries and institutions in New York, London, Los Angeles, Brussels, Milan, Hamburg, and Pittsburgh.

Select solo exhibitions

• 2025 – Just For You, ROMANCE, Pittsburgh, PA
• 2025 – White-Knuckle, Rose Easton, London, UK
• 2025 – miART, two-person booth with Eva Gold, Rose Easton, Milan, IT

Select group exhibitions

• 2025 – Abigail’s Party, Rose Easton, London, UK
• 2025 – Poor Images, curated by Ruba Al-Sweel, Siddiq Projects, Hamburg, DE
• 2025 – we know nothing about people who don’t cry, ROMANCE, Pittsburgh, PA
• 2024 – SLxRE, Silke Lindner Gallery, New York, NY
• 2024 – WANAWAL Archives, curated by Evar Hussayni, FORMA Arts, London, UK
• 2024 – Art Brussels, Rose Easton, Brussels, BE
• 2023 – Saccharine Symbols, Rose Easton, London, UK
• 2023 – Transversal: Where We Come From and Where We Are Going, 80 WSE Gallery, New York, NY

Tasneem Sarkez FAQs

Ocula | 2026