Essa
Grayeb

Essa Grayeb is a Palestinian visual artist and scholar whose practice spans various media, including video, photography, and installation. 

Some of Grayeb’s works are made from existing objects, footage, and sounds, which he appropriates and manipulates while constantly weaving in and out of reality and fiction. Grayeb examines narratives of the past and their contemporary interpretations, mainly in relation to Arab nationalism and Pan-Arabism, and originates from exploring elements connected to historical moments within the collective memory and their manifestations in popular culture.

He completed his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in 2022 at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, where he also earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Photography in 2019. He is the recipient of the Ilana Elovic-Bezalel Prize for Excellence in the Arts (2023) and has been selected as a fellow for the Alserkal Arts Foundation Residency (Dubai, 2025) and the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (2025–2026). Grayeb’s work has been exhibited at “De Appel” in Amsterdam and the Jakarta Biennale (2024), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana and The Mosaic Rooms in London (2024), the Palestinian Museum (2021), the A. M. Qattan Foundation (2020), Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, and Qalandiya International (2018). His films have been screened at film festivals and institutions, including the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris (2024), the Arab Film Festival in San Diego (2021), the Harlem International Film Festival (2020), the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (2020), and the Paris Festival for Alternative and Experimental Cinema (2020), among others.