Location: Pacifica, CA
Medium: Painting, sculpture, mixed media, installation
Website: saifazzuz.com
Saif Azzuz (b. 1987, Eureka, California) is a Libyan-Yurok artist who lives and works in Pacifica, California. An enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe, he received his BFA in Painting and Drawing from California College of the Arts (2013). He has participated in the Facebook Artist in Residence program and the Clarion Alley Mural Project. He is represented by Anthony Meier Fine Arts (Mill Valley) and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).
Azzuz’s paintings straddle abstraction and the natural world, employing spray paint, dyes, and inks applied over native and invasive plant species — bringing the land directly into the work. He draws on personal iconography rooted in both Yurok and Libyan heritage, attending to ecology, memory, and the interdependence of humans and environment. His work confronts the history of colonialism and Manifest Destiny while asserting the resilience of Indigenous cultures and their relationship to land. Alongside painting, he works in sculpture and mixed-media installation; his 2024 ICA San Francisco exhibition Cost of Living used materials of corporate development — construction fencing, barbed wire, surveillance cameras — to mirror the impact of gentrification on humans and nonhumans.
de Young Museum (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco); SFMOMA-related collections; Rennie Museum; North Carolina Museum of Art; Gochman Family Collection; UBS Art Collection; KADIST
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