Afaf Zurayk

Afaf Zurayk is a Lebanese-American artist and writer whose practice spans painting, drawing, and poetic reflection. Her work engages the sensory and emotional resonance of color, light, and gesture, offering a sustained meditation on memory, displacement, and interiority. Moving fluidly between abstraction and figuration, Zurayk builds layered compositions that probe the boundaries between form and feeling, presence and absence.

Throughout her career, Zurayk has developed a uniquely integrated approach, where painting and writing unfold in dialogue. While each medium retains its autonomy, they frequently converge in bodies of work that emphasize rhythm, repetition, and the spiritual dimensions of time and space.

Zurayk’s work has been widely exhibited across the Middle East and the United States. Recent solo and group exhibitions include Taking Shape, Abstraction in the Arab World, 1950 - 1980, Grey Art Gallery, New York (2020); Return Journeys, Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon (2019); and Beirut Octect, Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon (2023). In 2025, her work was showcased at the Arts Club of Chicago in conjunction with Huguette Caland: Bribes des corps. Her work is represented in the collections of the British Museum, London (UK); Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah (UAE); Sursock Museum, Beirut (Lebanon); and Darat al-Funun, Amman (Jordan).

Born in Beirut in 1948, Zurayk received her BA in Fine Arts from the American University of Beirut and an MA in Islamic Art from Harvard University. She has taught at American University of Beirut, the Lebanese American University, George Washington University, and Georgetown University. She currently lives and works in Beirut.

Salon 94 will present Zurayk's work alongside her contemporaries Dorothy Salhab Kazemi and Huguette Caland at Independent 20th Century and a later gallery exhibition in October. These presentations are organized in collaboration with Carla Chammas.