Ayman Zedani

Ayman Zedani (b. 1984, Abha, Saudi Arabia) is a Saudi artist who lives and works between Riyadh and Sharjah. He makes immersive installations, sound works and videos. His research-based projects look at the future of the Arabian Peninsula through the relationship between people and nature.

Zedani draws on spiritual ecology, science fiction and new materialist philosophy, and mixes fact with fiction to recover memory and address ecological issues. His first solo exhibition, bahar-bashar-shajar-hajar (sea-human-tree-stone), was held at Athr Gallery, Jeddah, in 2019. For the 2020 Lahore Biennale he turned grown biofilms into masks presented as pre-Islamic objects, with the writer and geographer Ahmad Makia. Between Desert Seas (2021) is a layered sound installation built from recordings of Arabian Sea humpback whales.

Zedani won the inaugural Ithra Art Prize in 2018 and was a finalist for the Louvre Abu Dhabi and Richard Mille Art Prize in 2022. His work has been shown at the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2021), Desert X AlUla (2022) and the Islamic Arts Biennale, Jeddah (2023). It was also in Arabofuturs at the Institut du monde arabe, Paris (2024), and the 16th Sharjah Biennial and 18th Istanbul Biennial (2025). He has held residencies at Delfina Foundation, London (2021), AlUla (2023) and NEOM (2024). He was curatorial coordinator for Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017) and 14 (2019). He was curatorial interlocutor for Between the Tides: A Gulf Quinquennial at NYUAD Art Gallery (2024).