2026 State of the Art Prize, New Jersey

About Dahlia Elsayed

Palisades Park, NJ

Dahlia Elsayed and Andrew Demirjian create immersive installations that challenge traditional hierarchies of perception, inviting audiences to engage through multiple sensory channels. They use visual, tactile, and sonic elements to construct environments that emphasize the body’s experience in space as a way to make meaning. Working across disciplines—textile, sculpture, design and sound—their objects and settings use traditional materials and methods to make new possibilities for engagement. Their work draws from the rich histories of iconography, architecture, and literature of their South West Asian and North African heritage, using a vocabulary of lush, colorful patterns and graphic, symbolic systems that pull from the past to anticipate new futures. Their collaborative work has been exhibited widely, including at REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA, Locust Projects, Miami, FL, The Ford Foundation Gallery, New York, NY, The Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI, Transformer Gallery, Washington, DC, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, and the Laznia Center for Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland, amongst many others. Their projects have been supported and recognized by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Visual Studies Workshop, CEC Artslink, the Grand Canyon National Park Residency, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic and others.

Dahlia Elsayed and Andrew Demirjian create immersive installations that challenge traditional hierarchies of perception, inviting audiences to engage through multiple sensory channels. They use visual, tactile, and sonic elements to construct environments that emphasize the body’s experience in space as a way to make meaning. Working across disciplines—textile, sculpture, design and sound—their objects and settings use traditional materials and methods to make new possibilities for engagement. Their work draws from the rich histories of iconography, architecture, and literature of their South West Asian and North African heritage, using a vocabulary of lush, colorful patterns and graphic, symbolic systems that pull from the past to anticipate new futures. Their collaborative work has been exhibited widely, including at REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA, Locust Projects, Miami, FL, The Ford Foundation Gallery, New York, NY, The Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI, Transformer Gallery, Washington, DC, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, and the Laznia Center for Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland, amongst many others. Their projects have been supported and recognized by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, The Visual Studies Workshop, CEC Artslink, the Grand Canyon National Park Residency, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic and others.