Aya Haidar is a Lebanese Multimedia artist. She spent most of her academic life in London, UK where she attended Lycee Francais Charles de Gaulle independent secondary school from 1990-2003. She later joined the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London, before transferring to the School of the Art Institute in Chicago in 2006. She completed a BA in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art in 2008. In 2009 she received her Masters degree in Non-Governmental Organisations & Development from the London School of Economics. 

Aya’s work stems from her experiences living abroad and away from her homeland in Lebanon. She uses the experiences of others and the stories she gets told to formulate pieces of art that try to build a connection between the materials and the theme, along side her own experiences when she briefly visits Lebanon. 

She writes on her official website: 

My investigation of the limitations of a visual language within fine art leads me to explore the fundamental elements of language that contribute to a story. This overlap plays on one’s senses of memory and imagination. I place myself at the centre of the work, both physically as the object and emotionally as the subject.

My current work focuses on the recycling of found and disposable objects making poetic works that explore loss, migration and memory, with a particular focus on the Middle East through the histories contained within aged, and culturally specific objects. I further develop this aspect of re-using objects to re-create narratives, to explore memory with a focus on older objects from previous generations. This idea of the development of a generational craft work that spans time, at once explores hand me down skills, stories and community, and by extension, cultural specificity and intercultural nature of British society.

My focus on developing inter-cultural dialogues is a vital step in the support of offering alternative ways to see the world, and initiate debate and dialogue about the globalised world we live in. I see my work contributing to dialogues around global cultures, media and questions of identity, both national and personal. I explore whether the durational aspect of craft, more so than other artforms, expresses concepts of time, through the way in which the hand of the artist is inherent within the medium. Alongside this a consideration of whether the voice is inherent within craft and its histories, alluding to feminist narratives by bringing the domestic into a more discursive platform. By reviewing history, authorship and authenticity, Cultural and historical customs are drawn out. Networks are re-worked where the material shapes the way the viewer identifies with stories and engagement can happen. Stories are recounted, history, authorship and authenticity are again revisited. - Aya Haidar