Aya Afaneh

Aya Afaneh is a Palestinian artist who lives in the United Arab Emirates. Her practice spans performance, sculpture, writing and printmaking. She uses her own body as a tool for mark-making, and her work also draws on food and on symbol-making.

Her research looks at how people communicate across time and place. She also treats food as a shared, generational tool for learning and reconciliation. For the exhibition Bygones at NYU Abu Dhabi in 2025, she led a symbol-making workshop. Participants responded to Etel Adnan's The Arab Apocalypse. In 2026 she convened Phenomenological Alphabet at The Project Space, NYU Abu Dhabi. She invited artists from her community into a dialogue on language and the body.

Afaneh graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi in 2021 with a BA in Art and Art History and in Theater, with a minor in Creative Writing. She was in the first Numoo cohort at NYU Abu Dhabi (2021 to 2022) and attended SAMT Alternative School (2022). She held the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Emerging Artists Fellowship (2023) and a Teaching Artist Fellowship (2024 to 2025). Her work has also been shown at Tashkeel, Bayt Al Mamzar and Alserkal Avenue.