Fassih Keiso
Fassih Keiso is known for his video, photographic, installation and performances. He was born in Syria, migrated to Australia in 1993, currently lives between Damascus and Melbourne. Having dual citizenship and dual culture, Keiso developed a dual perspective in his artworks and their themes. As an interdisciplinary artist, his work spans cross cultural genres, employing a variety of materials and techniques. He focuses on cultural polarity, the diaspora, migration, dislocation and global political warfare. In the past few years, Keiso’s inspiration derives from the cultural contexts of his home country of Syria, largely shaped by issues relating to colonialism, war and post-colonial trauma. His most recent subject matter spanning the destruction of archaeological heritage as an outcome of ongoing conflict in Syria.
Keiso has exhibited at MoMA PS1 and Apex-Art in New York City. At Artspace, Sydney College of the Art galleries in Sydney, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Gertrude Contemporary, West Space, National Gallery of Victoria and Ian Potter Museum in Melbourne, and at Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art in Darwin, Contemporary Art Tasmania in Hobart, Nixes in Adelaide, and Lake Macquarie City art gallery. He has also exhibited at Kunstverein Tiergaten in Berlin and Brakke Grond in Amsterdam. And took part in the 1998 and 2000 international event: Construction in Process in Melbourne and Bydgoszez in Poland. In 1998 his work travelled to respective museums around Asia as part of the Asialink program. He was represented at Art Dubai in 2010 and has exhibited at several galleries throughout Beirut, Damascus and Tunisia.
In 2019, Keiso was invited to showcase a multidisciplinary project at the Damascus Opera House. He has since been in stasis due to the pandemic travel restriction until October 2022 when he returned to Australia. While waiting in Damascus, Keiso captured documentation of the destruction of several cities in Syria and in June 2021 had a surveyed exhibition of his work at Art House.
Keiso is the author of The Body in Twilight a book published in Germany in 2008 concerning contemporary Arab artists in exile. In 2009, he founded and directed Centre for New Art in Northeast Syria which then closed after a year due to the war, and founded and directed Univeristy of Kalammon gallery 2015-16. In 2002, Keiso produced and directed several short films and documentaries in NYC.
Fassih Keiso received a Master in Design from the Lebanese University, MFA from the Victorian College of the Arts/Melbourne University in 1998 and a PhD in Electronic and Temporal Art from Sydney College of the Arts/Sydney University in 2004. In 2001 he studied Film and Video Production at New York University.
Since 2008 Keiso has been a lecturer in art and design at several academic institutions across the Middle East. He has been the recipient of the prestigious Samsatg scholarship and of multiple grants from the Australian Council for the Arts, Arts Victoria, City of Melbourne and other funding bodies. As well as partaking in studio residencies in Moscow, Portland, New York and Barcelona. In the last 4 years, Keiso has been shortlisted for several art prizes in Australia, including Bayside, Footscray, Wyndham, Blake, and the Bowness photography prize.
