Jude Abu Zaineh is a Palestinian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and curator whose work bridges art, food, science, and technology. Through decolonial and feminist perspectives, her practice explores cultural, diaspora, storytelling, and belonging themes. She draws on her Southwest Asian upbringing to examine counter-archives, home, and diaspora community themes.
She has exhibited internationally, including at the Ireland Glass Biennale, Malta Society of Arts, Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia (Portugal), SVA (New York, USA), Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, The Museum of Glass Art (Washington, USA), Centro de Cultura Digital (Mexico City), and Centre Culturel Canadien (Paris, France). Her work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Glass (USA), Art Windsor-Essex (Canada), and the City of Windsor.
Abu Zaineh is a recipient of the 2020 William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists and participated as the inaugural artist-in-residence with the Ontario Science Centre and MOCA Toronto. Her work has been featured in VICE Arabia, PBS, NPR, Canadian Art, and NEUES GLAS-NEW GLASS.
She holds an MFA from the University of Windsor (Canada) and a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY, USA), where she was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellow. Abu Zaineh works between upstate New York and southern Ontario.
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Which hood are you in?
You can find me floating between Upstate NY, Windsor, and downtown Toronto often looking for the best falafel sandwich wherever I go.
What do you do?
I’m an interdisciplinary artist working across all sorts of media. Lately, I’ve been focused on bio art (art-science-tech) practices, glass bending and neon, film/video, and installation in my studio practice. Regardless of the material output, my work engages with questions and critique around ideals of home, belonging, and displacement amongst other cultural themes, while presenting counter-archives through a decolonial lens from my experiences as a Palestinian in the diaspora.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently prepping for a couple of artist residencies in the spring/summer of 2025 which will lead to a touring solo exhibition beginning in the fall of 2025. My coming work will continue to utilize my interdisciplinary approach to creation, offering a little bit of everything in terms of my continued material exploration in the upcoming exhibition.
Where can we find your work?
