Azza Zein

PhD Economics
MFA Fine Arts  

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I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I work, and live, the Boonwurung, and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging.



Azza Zein is a visual artist and writer who lives and works between Narrm Melbourne and Beirut. Born to a Syrian mother and a Lebanese father, Zein grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. Her practice-led research examines concepts of value in art through the materiality of domestic space and personal experience as a migrant. Through a process of rematerialisation, conceptualised as care for  ‘migrant  materials’, her recent works comment on the dematerialisation of the economy and invisible labour. Her artistic research draws on her heritage and her background in economics to explore how artistic processes can be alternative modes of revaluation.

Zein holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Victorian College of Arts, the University of Melbourne (2020) and a PhD in economics from Texas A&M University (2005). She has exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions held in artist-run spaces in Australia. She has participated in diverse international art residencies around notions of the economy. In Argentina (Trans Acciones Utopicas) , India (ritualistic economy and labour), Mparntwe/Alice Springs (relations between body, labour and land) and the Santa Fe Art Institute Labour residency. Zein was recently a finalist in the Incinerator Gallery Art for Social Change Award (2020), Australian Muslim Artist Award (2019) and the Athenaeum Club award (2020).

Zein won the Fiona Myer Art+Australia Internship award for 2020. She published her writing in Art + Australia, in Kohl, a Journal for Body and Gender Research, un Extended and recently Kings Artist-run Live from the field. She also performed in the CARE: transforming values through art, ethics and feminism, at George Paton Gallery in 2019. Her essay 'The Migrant Material," written in the voice of an industrial wooden pole comment on industrialisation as forms of de-rooting and compare notions of care, was published in a book, Care Ethics and Art Anthology edited by Jacqueline Millner and Gretchen Coombs (Routledge).

She is a member of un Projects editorial committee (2021-2024). She was a member of the Women’s Art Register(WAR) committee and un Projects board member (treasurer, 2020-2021)

In 2022, she was a part-time lecturer in the department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut and at La Trobe University in the school of humanities and social sciences (department of visual arts). In 2023 she has taught in critical and theoretical studies at the Victorian College of the Arts, the University of Melbourne  and lectured at La Trobe University. 


EXHIBITIONS

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2012
Tashabok, on going project, Collaborative drawing events, (in collaboration with Samm Sutton, and Claudia Phares funded by 2022/23 Small Project Yarra Grants Program)


Parallax, Group exhibition for SART Artists/Teachers, American University of Beirut, Saleeby Museum curated by Prof. Walid Sadek and Dr. Octavian Esanu

The way we talk (about it), Group exhibition, Brunswick Temporary, curated by Karleng Lim

Lock Dispersal in Corner Solutions, Incinerator Gallery (solo)


Taskscape, in Visualising Care Network, Women and Work exhibition (online at Duke University) facilitated by Lauren Henschel

Currents have their velocity; Skins have their texture, Salamanca Arts Center, Meshwork, curated by Grace Pundyk, Hobart, Tasmania


With-Draw, Southwest Contemporary, I’ve Never Seen The Sky Like This Before, curated by Bronia Iwańczak, Adelaide, South Australia

Incinerator Gallery Art Social Change Award Online Exhibition, curated by Jake Treacy

Kings Artist-Run, Live from the field curated by Katie Ryan and Jeremy Eaton

Fractured Hairline, in Against Social Distancing Newsletter, Institute of Postcolonial Studies, Melbourne

FavourEconomy, Vol.5, 2020, curated by Claire Field

Erasure, digital exhibition, curated by Nur Shkembi, in association with CoVA, (Centre of Visual Arts) at VCA.

Shepparton art festival, AMA exhibition, La Trobe University Shepparton campus, curated by Dr. Jacqueline Millner.


VCA grad show (MFA project), Martyn Myer Arena, Melbourne

Performance lecture ‘The Migrant Material’ as part of CARE: transforming values through art, ethics and feminism, George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne

Australian Muslim Artist Award 2019 exhibition, Islamic Museum of Australia, Thornbury, Victoria


Residual Lines, Seventh Gallery. (solo)

Stoppage, Rubicon ARI. (solo)


9x5 NOW’, curated by Elizabeth Gower, Margaret Lawrence Gallery.


Sea of corners, Blindside. (solo)

SOAP at Kings, KINGS ARI.


Archiving and Fragmentation in the Digital Age, SOAP Collective, Fort Delta.


Digital Fever, c3 Contemporary Artspace. (solo)


A map to disappear, Seventh Gallery. (solo)

Corners of Shutters: Compilation, compiled by Kathrin Wolkowicz, SUB, Rotterdam, Netherlands


iProtest, George Paton Gallery, Melbourne (solo)

Mary and Lou Senini Student Art Award Exhibition, McClelland Sculpture Park

Wallara Travelling Scholarship Exhibition, Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne

Gertrude Street Projection Festival, Melbourne


International Art Residencies

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2021



2020


2018




2016 
Santa Fe Art Institute, Labor Residency, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Watch This Space, https://www.wts.org.au/, Mparntwe / Alice Springs

Artist For Artist Masterclass, The Institutional Collapse, (online)

Santa Fe Art Institute, 2020 Labor Residency, Santa Fe, New Mexico (participated remotely July 2020)

Residency at Kriti Gallery, Varanasi, India

Trans Acciones Utopicas, Centro Rural De Arte, Cazon Argentina


AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS

2020






2019






2012  
 Finalist, Incinerator Gallery Art Social Change Award Online Exhibition

Shortlisted for the Athenaeum Club Award 2019



Fiona Myer Art & Australia Internship Award (2020)

Shortlisted for the AMA award at the Islamic Museum of Australia


National Gallery of Victoria Trustees Award

Finalist, Mary and Lou Senini Student Art Award

Finalist, Wallara Traveling Scholarship

Art Grant, University of Melbourne Student Union


INVITED TALKS AND PANEL PARTICIPATION  



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2015
 
Panel coordinator, Language Ecologies, un Projects, ACCA, Melbourne.

Lecture for MFA students on Art preoccupied with economies and borders invited by Dr Sofi Basseghi at RMIT university 

Entanglement: Art and Activism, lecture and workshop, Australian Palestinian Solidarity Conference 

Lecture for MCA students on Migrant Materials, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (invited by Dr. Tessa Laird)

Artist talk, Incinerator Gallery with Dr. Lina Koleilat on contemporary work precarity and art. 

Artist talk, La Trobe Art University, Visual Arts forum 


Artist talk,  American University of Beirut, Studio Arts Lecture Series

Panel discussion on creative activism, organised by Dr. Andrew Goodman at La Trobe University with Jude Anderson and Linto Thomas, Nicole Skeltys, Clare O’Hanlon (online)

Panel discussion on Government, Incinerator Gallery Art for Social Change Award Exhibition (online)

Artist talk with Dr. Jacqueline Millner, AMA exhibition, La Trobe University Shepparton 

Artists and curator's talk, Assembly Point: Erasure, curated by Nur Shkembi, Centre of Visual Art University of Melbourne, University of Melbourne

Performance lecture ‘The Migrant Material’ as part of CARE: transforming values through art, ethics and feminism, Symposium, George Paton Gallery, University of Melbourne

Presenting paper on Rematerialization in a panel on Practicing Dissent through Art, Activism, and Urbanism, Kohl Journal, Alternative Economies Conference, Beirut.

Panel discussion around Iconoclasm: Fever and Anxiety with Dr. Antonio Gonzalez Zarandona and Martina Copley, Blindside Gallery.

Discussion coordinator with Xanthe Waite after a Talk by Dr. Paul Raschky on economic development and satellite images, SOAP at KINGS, KINGS Artist-run.

Panel discussion on Flatness and Hybridity, SOAP at Fort Delta