Artist Bio
ARTIST BIO
Aida Silvestri is an interdisciplinary artist and educator of Eritrean descent. She creates mixed-media artworks that challenge the status quo of stigma, prejudice, and social injustice regarding race, class, identity, and health, often combining text, images, and experimental techniques to manipulate the photographic surface.
Using innovative modes of mixed media portraiture, Silvestri’s celebrated projects Even This Will Pass (2013 – 2014), and Unsterile Clinic (2015) respectively address people trafficking by highlighting the dangerous journeys undertaken by economic and political refugees and advocate for survivors of gender-based violence by drawing attention to the widespread practice of female genital mutilation. Both projects were part of solo exhibitions in London- respectively, at the Roman Road Gallery and Autograph.
She has exhibited/exhibited in local and international group shows such as Look at Us 25 Years of Art (Collection Deutsche Börse) Eschborn Germany, Trace - Formations of Likeness (Photography and Video from The Walther Collection) Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, RECLAIMING & MAKING: ART, DESIRE, VIOLENCE at the Museum of Sex in NY, Time and the Other, Care | Contagion | Community - Self & Other: Autograph, London, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time and the Other (FotoFest, Houston, 2020), and at The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Saatchi Gallery, London; TEAT Champ Fleuri, Sainte-Clotilde; Musée National d’Histoire-aux-Poissons, Ville-Haute; The Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei; Benaki Museum, Athens; Cours de L’Archevéché, Arles; and Centquarter, Paris. In 2021, she was artist-in-residence at Light Work, Syracuse. Her works are held in the collections of the Sainte-Clotilde; Musée National d’Histoire-aux-Poissons, Arendt & Medernach, Museum of Fine Art, Houston (USA), Los Angeles Country Museum (USA), Autograph, London (UK), The Walther Collection, Deutsche Börsecollection and private collations.
Selected publications include the British Journal of Photography, Autograph Newspaper, Blow Photo, Looking for the Clouds (EMOP), Reframing Migration, African Cosmologies Photography, Time and the Other, Care | Contagion | Community—Self & Other, and African Artists: From 1882 to Now.
Aida Silvestri is an interdisciplinary artist and educator of Eritrean descent. She creates mixed-media artworks that challenge the status quo of stigma, prejudice, and social injustice regarding race, class, identity, and health, often combining text, images, and experimental techniques to manipulate the photographic surface.
Using innovative modes of mixed media portraiture, Silvestri’s celebrated projects Even This Will Pass (2013 – 2014), and Unsterile Clinic (2015) respectively address people trafficking by highlighting the dangerous journeys undertaken by economic and political refugees and advocate for survivors of gender-based violence by drawing attention to the widespread practice of female genital mutilation. Both projects were part of solo exhibitions in London- respectively, at the Roman Road Gallery and Autograph.
She has exhibited/exhibited in local and international group shows such as Look at Us 25 Years of Art (Collection Deutsche Börse) Eschborn Germany, Trace - Formations of Likeness (Photography and Video from The Walther Collection) Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany, RECLAIMING & MAKING: ART, DESIRE, VIOLENCE at the Museum of Sex in NY, Time and the Other, Care | Contagion | Community - Self & Other: Autograph, London, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time and the Other (FotoFest, Houston, 2020), and at The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Saatchi Gallery, London; TEAT Champ Fleuri, Sainte-Clotilde; Musée National d’Histoire-aux-Poissons, Ville-Haute; The Hong-Gah Museum, Taipei; Benaki Museum, Athens; Cours de L’Archevéché, Arles; and Centquarter, Paris. In 2021, she was artist-in-residence at Light Work, Syracuse. Her works are held in the collections of the Sainte-Clotilde; Musée National d’Histoire-aux-Poissons, Arendt & Medernach, Museum of Fine Art, Houston (USA), Los Angeles Country Museum (USA), Autograph, London (UK), The Walther Collection, Deutsche Börsecollection and private collations.
Selected publications include the British Journal of Photography, Autograph Newspaper, Blow Photo, Looking for the Clouds (EMOP), Reframing Migration, African Cosmologies Photography, Time and the Other, Care | Contagion | Community—Self & Other, and African Artists: From 1882 to Now.