Artist Bio:
aisha tida received her BFA from Cornell University (2016), served as the artist-in-residence at El Warcha Collaborative Studios in El Hafsia (2019-2020), and trained in the postgraduate art-in-context program TASAWAR Curatorial Studios in Tunis (2019-2021). A Houston-born nomad, aisha tida relocated to Houston from Tunisia in December 2020.
Artist Statement:
Aisha Tidachan Abbassi (عائشة تيدا « aisha tida ») is a cultural worker based between Houston and Tunis. She collaboratively employs alternative forms of education and creative intervention to engage children and young adults in the many places she calls home. Her artistic practice has sculptural and social emphases and employs a range of techniques and materials, from quilting and super-low-tech silkscreen printing to radical recipe-writing and language. Her work lies at the intersection of art, design, and civic action and is grounded in the themes of heritage and diaspora, art as social practice, and the making and breaking of patterns.
In her artistic and curatorial work, aisha explores the creative potential of togetherness when contemporary and community arts converge, co-creating with artists and initiatives whose aesthetic practice is a tool for community-building in search of justice. She seeks to discover what art, curation, and intersectional education can offer in the further development of individual awareness, collective identity, and a more equitable future.
