Aya Chriki, born in 1995 in Gabès, Tunisia, is a visual artist and a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Rennes 2, France. Her journey combines a solid academic background with an engaged artistic practice focused on themes of exile, gender, and identity. She approaches these subjects through a technical and conceptual experimentation with the media she works with, including photography, videography, sometimes text, and occasionally a combination of these practices.
Aya began her artistic path with a degree in cinematographic and audiovisual studies, specializing in image, which she obtained from ISAMM in Tunisia in 2017. She then deepened her practice in photography with a Master 1 from the Institute of Fine Arts in Sousse, Tunisia, in 2018. In 2022, she furthered her expertise with a Master’s degree in Art Sciences from the University of Saint-Étienne, France, where she explored Mobile Image as an act of resistance for female artists from the ANMO (North Africa and Middle East) region.
Between 2022 and 2024, she pursued a Master CAPS (Creative Approaches to Public Space) at the University of Rennes 2, France. This period marked a turning point in her work, as she combined her academic research, personal experiences, and artistic practice to create a collective visual narrative focused on female exile, whether chosen or forced. This project strengthened her interest in using the visual arts as a tool for visibility and expression for exiled women from the ANMO region.
Since September 2024, Aya has been pursuing a PhD in art history at the University of Rennes 2, as part of a research-creation project. Her thesis explores the paths of exiled women artists (whether by choice or force) from the ANMO region who reside in France, Egypt, or Jordan.
In her artistic work, Aya delves into a deep exploration of the media she uses. In analog photography, she questions time, materiality, and the physical relationship with film and darkroom chemicals, creating an intimate sensory experience. In video art, she manipulates time, opacity, and transparency to tell stories that blend reality, imagination, and experimentation. These technical and conceptual explorations allow her to create new dimensions of space and time, where the image – whether fixed or mobile – becomes the frame and surface for sensitive and engaged narratives on exile, displacement, the body, gender, identity, belonging, and more.
Her works have been presented in renowned collective exhibitions in France, Tunisia, Lebanon, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
In 2022, she won the first prize in photography at the Gabès Cinéma Fen Festival. In 2024, she was distinguished in the writing competition « Overseas: Humanizing Migration Experiences Through Narrative, » organized by ICTJ in Tunisia.
Dividing her time between France and Tunisia, Aya Chriki blends artistic creation with academic reflection to offer a critical, feminist, intersectional, and decolonial approach to issues related to exile, gender, and identity.
The drawing was created by Elline Baglin.
The photo was taken by Nawres Zriei.
Aya Chriki 