Saif Azzuz: Aiy-ye-kwee’ @ Anthony Meier
Anthony Meier is pleased to present Aiy-ye-kwee’, a solo exhibition of new work by Saif Azzuz (Libyan/Yurok, b. 1987, Eureka, CA) on view March 26–May 15, 2026. Featuring painting, sculpture, installation, and assemblage across a range of materials—acrylic on canvas, welded metal, digital print on deerhide, charcoal from cultural burns, carved wood, and a site-specific mural—the exhibition draws its title from a Yurok greeting phrase.
From this entry point, Aiy-ye-kwee’ invites you into Azzuz’s practice, grounded in making as a way of understanding cultural and ecological inheritance: What we have received, and what we are leaving for future generations.
Within the exhibition, three large-scale fire paintings, based on photographs taken by Azzuz’s mother, Elizabeth Azzuz, depict the forests and rivers of Weitchpec, California. These canvases foreground plants and systems dependent on fire, tracing ecological knowledge cultivated over millennia.
Greeting visitors in the gallery window, a hanging floral sculpture by Azzuz’s wife, Lulu Thrower, honors family, community, and those who have passed while works by the artists’ children further reinforce the intergenerational nature of making and interconnectedness.
At the center of the gallery, a hand-carved plywood plinth, etched with triangular sturgeon patterns, text, and plant and animal forms, supports bouquets of plasma-cut steel flowers. Here, industrial material is coaxed into living form, and every material holds a specific legacy of the lands and communities it has encountered.
Meanwhile, red triangular frames with charcoal drawings echo the sturgeon’s armored back. These works connect to Azzuz’s first large-scale outdoor public commission, a 35-foot giant sturgeon, crafted from steel, aluminum, salvaged car parts, and natural materials from the Bay Area, which will be unveiled in May 2026 at Storm King Art Center in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Across the gallery ceiling, a mural with Arabic text stretches overhead, marking the vulnerability of learning and the oscillation between worlds. Throughout the exhibition, titles move between English, Arabic, and Yurok, tracing language as both inheritance and living practice. With Aiy-ye-kwee’, Azzuz ultimately asks: What do we carry forward? And what might we still learn to tend?
The artist’s first monograph will be published concurrently with the exhibition by Sming Sming Books, the publishing studio of artist Vivian Sming, in collaboration with curator Kathryn Cua. Details of a book launch will be announced.
Saif Azzuz (b. 1987) is a Libyan-Yurok artist who resides in Pacifica, CA. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Painting and Drawing from the California College of the Arts in 2013.
Azzuz has a forthcoming public art installation at Storm King Art Center in May of 2026 and has exhibited widely in the Bay Area and beyond including exhibitions at 1599dt Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Adobe Books, San Francisco, CA; Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA; Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, TX; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, CA; de Young Museum - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris, FR; ICA SF, San Francisco, CA; Pt.2 Gallery, Oakland, CA; Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, CA; Jack Barrett, New York, NY; Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY and K Art, Buffalo, NY; Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai; Kadist, San Francisco, CA; NIAD, Oakland, CA; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, NY; Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, CA; PRAX, Oregon State University, OR; and Rule Gallery, Denver, CO.
Azzuz is a 2022 SFMOMA SECA Award finalist and has participated in the Clarion Alley Mural Project and the Storm King and Facebook Artist in Residence programs.
Selected public collections include de Young Museum - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Facebook, Menlo Park, CA; Gochman Family Collection, NY; KADIST, San Francisco, CA; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Rennie Museum, Vancouver, Canada; Stanford Health Care Art Collection, Menlo Park, CA; UBS Art Collection, New York, NY; and University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, MN.