Dala Nasser (b. 1990, Tyre; lives and works in Beirut and London) received an MFA from Yale University (2021) and a BFA from University College London (2016). As an artist working through abstraction and alternative forms of image-making, Dala integrates sound, performance and film in her practice, but remains quintessentially a painter as she thinks through abstraction and the medium’s most elementary materials: fabric, pigments, stretcher bars, mark making.
In her practice, Dala understands material not only as form but as a witness to historical conditions, marked by the enduring forces of colonial systems and the ecological and psychological disintegration they cause. Her works emerge through processes in which materials act as agents of memory and testimony. She works with natural elements such as soil, ash, clay, charcoal, plants, and insects, each intimately tied to the landscape. Applied to fabric through acts of staining, soaking, dyeing, and rubbing. Often created via frottage on land or spiritual sites, these works serve as archives: porous surfaces that register the traces of lived experience and environmental transformation foregrounding non-claimed histories, ecologies of slow violence, and colonial theft in times and places where human language has been rendered insufficient or out of reach.
Selected solo exhibitions include: Nottingham Contemporary (forthcoming); Kunsthalle Basel (2025); Renaissance Society, Chicago (2023); Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (2022); and V.O Curations, London (2022). Selected group exhibitions include: Aichi Triennale, Nagoya (2025); Aïshti Foundation, Beirut (2025); Accelerator, Stockholm (2025); Wellcome Collection, London (2025); Espoo Museum of Modern Art (2025); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2024); Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riiyadh (2024); 15th Sharjah Biennial (2023); 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022); and Beirut Art Center (2019). Nasser is a recipient of Isola Sicilia Prize (2022) and 32nd Salon D’Automne Emerging Artist Prize (2017). Nasser has participated in residencies at V.O Curations, London (2021); Gapado AIR, Jeju Island (2019); and Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2017).
Nasser’s work is in the collections of Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; Hartwig Art Foundation, Amsterdam; Qatar Museums; and Tate, London.
Photo by Paul Gorra.