Born in Portland, Oregon in 2002 to Libyan immigrant parents and now based in New York, Tasneem Sarkez works across painting and sculpture in a practice she describes as "Arab kitsch." Working primarily in oil, she builds compositions sourced from Arab social media and the visual grammar of early-2000s internet design: images that arrive on canvas already once removed, their blurs and crops becoming painterly qualities.

"Arab kitsch" names the aesthetic territory this produces: consumer objects that acquire cultural weight through circulation and mistranslation, addressed to two audiences at once. The car is Sarkez's most persistent subject. In Good Morning (2023), a muted rendering of a Jeep is overwritten with Arabic script that functions, within WANA internet culture, as a meme category invisible to anglophone viewers. Text operates throughout as an image in its own right: First Lady pairs a portrait of one of Gaddafi's Amazonian bodyguards with soap packaging playing on virginity and purity, while Heart Notes No. 2 (2025) reassembles found perfume bottles, their labels replaced with Sarkez's own, recording an acculturation arrested mid-process.

Solo presentations include White-Knuckle at Rose Easton, London, and Just For You at ROMANCE, Pittsburgh (both 2025). She received the Martin Wong Award in 2023.

Artist text by Victoria Comstock-Kershaw.