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Aseel AlYaqoub (b. 1986, Kuwait) is a research-based, interdisciplinary artist and writer. Her practice examines how authority is constructed and sustained: how states, institutions and scientific disciplines produce knowledge about territory, history and identity, and what that knowledge leaves out. Drawing on archival research, she questions the methods through which newly independent states were built, many of them inherited from the empires they replaced. The survey, the map, the herbarium, the master plan and the satellite image recur in her work as instruments of both governance and representation.
Her earlier work and writing addressed national nostalgia, military spectacle and the borrowed architectural languages of the Gulf state. “Space Wars”, the Kuwait Pavilion she co-curated for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2021), challenged depictions of Kuwait's hinterland as empty land set against oil-funded cities. Recent projects turn these questions towards systems of classification and vision. “Flora Incognita”, winner of the 7th Ithra Art Prize (2026), presents invented desert species within the apparatus of colonial botany: steel cabinets, and Latinised names. “The Legend of No Legend”, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia for ‘A Necessary Fiction’ in Venice (2026), compresses centuries of cartographic convention into a single drawing with no key. Across drawing, sculpture, installation, video and text, she treats the record as something made, contested and open to revision.
Her work has been exhibited at Bildmuseet (solo, 2025), Desert X AlUla (2024), the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2024), Diriyah Art Futures, the Media Majlis Museum and the Karachi Biennale. She was a co-recipient of the inaugural Art Jameel Commission (2018), and her work is held in the collections of the Barjeel Art Foundation, Art Jameel and Ithra. Her writing appears in “Deserts Are Not Empty” (Columbia University Press), “Architecture of the Territory” (Collective for Architecture Lebanon / Kaph Books) and the “Journal of Architectural Education”.
Her earlier work and writing addressed national nostalgia, military spectacle and the borrowed architectural languages of the Gulf state. “Space Wars”, the Kuwait Pavilion she co-curated for the 17th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2021), challenged depictions of Kuwait's hinterland as empty land set against oil-funded cities. Recent projects turn these questions towards systems of classification and vision. “Flora Incognita”, winner of the 7th Ithra Art Prize (2026), presents invented desert species within the apparatus of colonial botany: steel cabinets, and Latinised names. “The Legend of No Legend”, commissioned by the Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia for ‘A Necessary Fiction’ in Venice (2026), compresses centuries of cartographic convention into a single drawing with no key. Across drawing, sculpture, installation, video and text, she treats the record as something made, contested and open to revision.
Her work has been exhibited at Bildmuseet (solo, 2025), Desert X AlUla (2024), the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale (2024), Diriyah Art Futures, the Media Majlis Museum and the Karachi Biennale. She was a co-recipient of the inaugural Art Jameel Commission (2018), and her work is held in the collections of the Barjeel Art Foundation, Art Jameel and Ithra. Her writing appears in “Deserts Are Not Empty” (Columbia University Press), “Architecture of the Territory” (Collective for Architecture Lebanon / Kaph Books) and the “Journal of Architectural Education”.
Education
2013 - 2015 MFA Degree. Pratt Institute, NY, USA
2007 - 2009 BA (Hons) Degree, Chelsea College of Arts, London, UK
2003 - 2007 RIBA Part 1, AA School of Architecture, London, UK
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2013 - 2015 MFA Degree. Pratt Institute, NY, USA
2007 - 2009 BA (Hons) Degree, Chelsea College of Arts, London, UK
2003 - 2007 RIBA Part 1, AA School of Architecture, London, UK
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