Nadia Ayari (b. 1981, Tunis, Tunisia) is a New York–based Tunisian-American artist whose work straddles abstraction and figuration, often negotiating the personal and the political.

Drawing on a cast of characters inspired by the flora of her native Tunisia, her practice engages narratives of survival. In recent years, a persistent new protagonist has brought renewed autonomy to her compositions. Proliferating freely across the canvases, the pink flower appears in a range of forms and associated meanings: at times open, revealing a black spherical center; at others closed, resembling an eye, its petals either fluttering with vibrating motion or hanging limply in presumed stillness. While compositional details and background colors vary across bodies of work, the paintings remain grounded in a posthumanist perspective. They function as visual representations of lived and observed conditions—scenes in which the figures thrive against all odds. Rendered in thick, methodically applied oil paint, the protagonists and the plastic space they inhabit are given a substantial skin, lending them a strong physical presence.

Developed in tandem with her paintings, Ayari’s sculptural practice—now incorporating 3D printing, cast glass, and fresco—extends and deepens her conceptual narratives. These works operate as reflective sites in dialogue with events unfolding in the paintings. Abstracted glass forms and fresco imagery echo elements from the oil compositions, becoming visual anchors that articulate and reinforce her aesthetic and conceptual concerns.

Nadia Ayari has presented a solo exhibition at Double Q in Hong Kong. In 2023, she had a solo exhibition at Bremond Capela in Paris, and in 2022 at Nina Johnson in Miami. Earlier in her career, she presented solo projects at Taymour Grahne in New York in 2016 and in London in 2019, as well as at The Third Line in Dubai and Monya Rowe in New York. She has participated in major international biennials, including the 12th International Cairo Biennale in 2010 and the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennale in 2011. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Saatchi Gallery in London, Maraya Art Center in Sharjah, Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the American University Museum in Washington, DC, The Africa Center in New York, and MoMA PS1. Her work was included in Phaidon’s Great Women Painters. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.