Azza Abo Rabieh is a Syrian artist living in Beirut. Her work, sensitive and sensuous, moves with dexterity between painting, drawing and printmaking, her subtle shapes and lines developing in a seamless eroticism between technique and form.

Her work inhabits this world in a state of lightness, almost play, almost delicate, almost crude. In her exacting surfaces there is a truth to experience, to hope, to what could be if only we would see, feel, perhaps abandon ourselves to depth.

Layers upon layers of closely woven tulle or net are arranged carefully yet definitely on surfaces, creating  precise  and  delicate  counterpoints  to  line,  a  sensitive  depth  of  colour  to  match  their strength.  Without knowing we know that the layers are many, the depth is clear. Depth again, lightness again.

Lightness meets depth, dives to the deeps of the sea and finds yet a lightness there, a joy, eroticism, that is exactly as it is, as it feels to be in the lightness and depths of great passion, of sex, of love. The lightness is that of becoming one, the depth of the experience, touch. The simple and joyful confusion of bodies, hearts, minds.

Azza Abo Rebieh (Syria, b.1980) obtained her degree in printmaking from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Damascus University in 2002. Initially interested in etching and engraving, she has extended her work to encompass an array of media and materials, including watercolor, thread and tulle on canvas, ink painting, and printing on leather.

Abo Rebieh held her first solo exhibitions in 2018 and 2019 at 392 Rmeil (Beirut, Lebanon) managed and curated by Nelsy Massoud, and in 2022 she held her solo exhibition, ‘Yearning’ at Saleh Barakat Gallery. In 2024 she held a solo exhibition and performance titled ‘111’ at Majaz gallery (Beirut, Lebanon). She has participated in more than fifteen group exhibitions and has been the recipient of three awards for artistic work including First prize in the Damascus Annual Youth Exhibition (2006).

Abo Rebieh’s work is held in a number of notable collections including the British Museum (London), Musee de l’institute du Monde Arabe (Paris), Dalloul Foundation (Lebanon), Atassi Foundation (Syria) and the Ostrobothnian Museum Vaasa (Finland).

She  has  participated  in  a  number  of  residencies,  notably  an  online  art  residency  organized  by Coculture and Ettijahat & Martin Roth Initiative, Germany (2021), an art residency for one month as an Artist Protection Fund fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, Italy (2020), and a residency of four months  as  Artist  Protection  Fund  fellow  at  the  American  Academy  in  Rome,  Italy  (2019-2020).

In 2025 she was the recipient of the prestigious Vaclav Havel Prize for creative dissent and a main stage speaker at the Oslo Freedom Forum.