Ziad Al Najjar Emirati-American, b. 2001

Ziad Al Najjar’s paintings always start with the body, a site through which space and perception are negotiated. Moving between intuitive response and deliberate mark-making, his work expresses an ongoing curiosity for the systems that condition human experience. These flows inform an experimental engagement with surface and material, as forms spread, erode, resist, and recombine across the canvas. Working between control and release, abstraction and figuration, Al Najjar approaches painting as a way of thinking through bodily conditions, translating sensation, duration, and focused attention into a considered visual field.

Al Najjar works beyond representational concerns, pursuing an ongoing enquiry into materiality, form, pattern, and symbolic language. His compositions move fluidly between the microscopic and the expansive: at times they appear magnified and cellular, at others distant and atmospheric. This shifting scale reflects the artist’s interest in interconnected systems of body, nature, and the spiritual. 

Guided by a heightened sensitivity to how we see and dwell in the world, Al Najjar builds surfaces that capture delicacy and intensity. Layers of pigment, modulations of opacity, and diffused transitions of colour establish zones where form and light converge and certainty slips away. His paintings invite sustained attention, encouraging the viewer to follow subtle variations in tone, density, and movement, and to navigate the shifting terrain of ambiguity that animates each work.

Al Najjar completed his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2023. His work has been presented in solo and dual exhibitions at NYU Abu Dhabi, Tabari Artspace and Bawa Gallery, and in group exhibitions across the UAE, Europe and the US. His work is held in international private collections, including the Barjeel Art Foundation, and he has been commissioned by Dior.