Artist Biography

UAE-based Italian-Lebanese visual artist and writer Cristiana de Marchi holds an MFA with honours in Archaeology from the University of Turin, Italy, and a PhD in Artistic Research from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. She is a graduate of the Salama bint Hamdan Emerging Artists Fellowship (Abu Dhabi).

De Marchi’s work has been featured in ArtAsiaPacific, Artforum, Contemporary Practices, Artribune, The Art Newspaper, and Harper’s Bazaar Art Arabia, among others. She has exhibited at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Mathaf, Museum of Modern Art (Qatar), Villa Romana (Italy), Museum of Modern Art (South Korea), Sursock Museum (Lebanon), Langgeng Art Foundation (Indonesia), The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and New York University (both USA), Villa Vassilieff (France), Sharjah Art Museum, Maraya Art Centre (both UAE), and at the Biennial of Experimental Poetry (2024), Textile Biennale (2023), Yinchuan Biennale (2016), Santa Cruz Biennale (2016), Biennale Donna (2021), Culture of Peace Biennial (2016), as well as in parallel events to the Singapore Biennial (2013) and the Istanbul Biennial (2022).

De Marchi has been an artist-in-residence at various esteemed institutions, including the Cultural Foundation, UAE (2022–2023); Serlachius Residency,Finland (2022); University of Cincinnati (2018–2019); MoCA Yinchuan, China (2016); Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2014); Santa Fe Art Institute (2014); The University of the Arts, Philadelphia (2012); and most recently at Al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art (2024). Her work is represented in prominent collections, including the Centre Pompidou (France), MoCA Yinchuan (China), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (USA). Her poetry book, Embodying, was published by the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2016.