Continuing through May 15, 2026
“Aiy-ye-kwee” means “welcome” in the Yurok language. The title reflects Saif Azzuz’s attitude of inclusivity in both his art practice and his life. With his Libyan father and his mother, a member of the Yurok tribe of Northern California, the artist grew up surrounded by relatives who were always making things, so he gravitated naturally into an art career. “Aiy-ye-kwee” includes paintings, sculptures, wall-mounted constructions, a mural, and textile works alluding to the history of settler colonialism, while highlighting the culture and traditional practices of the Indigenous Yurok people.
We are immersed in Azzuz’s variety of work immediately upon entering the gallery. Each of the opposing walls bears a trio of expansive acrylic paintings on unprimed canvas hanging side by side (all 2026). Searing reds and oranges evoke the presence of fire, with spiky foliage shapes suggesting thick tree trunks and thrusting branches. Energetic line work describes leaves or ferns. Drips splay in all directions, revealing the artist’s rotation of the canvas as he worked. Azzuz also frequently employs the unusual technique of working from the back of the canvas, with the paint pushed or seeping through the fabric from behind.
Fire is a sensitive issue for Californians, but here too Azzuz welcomes it in the Indigenous form of controlled burns to promote a healthy forest ecosystem. The three large paintings, with titles such as “The uncertain distance between past and present” (2026), are based on photos that his mother, Elizabeth Azzuz, has taken of “cultural burns” on the Yurok reservation, where she is Director of Traditional Fire and Treasurer for the Cultural Fire Management Council of the Yurok. (A group exhibition, “Good Fire,” currently on view at Oakland Museum, focuses on this revived practice and includes work by the Azzuzes, mother and son.) Azzuz’s interpretations of native plant species — lilies, sage, redwoods — is abstraction at its most stylized. Paint is intense in hue but often thin in application, at times just a stain, with the raw canvas visible in numerous passages. His aggressive and unusual palette, with acid greens leaning to chartreuse, and warm hues that smolder and glow as they fade into the canvas, gives them an unexpected bite.
Given the multiplicity of media, a standout work, “The fabric of this country” (2026), a tapestry anchored by a stained tan canvas or tarp, proves exemplary. Its edges are pierced by large steel grommets and bordered by rectangular scraps of colorful fabric in floral and Western motifs — covered wagons, horses, a pint-sized guitar player in a fringed leather jacket, fish, and a bald eagle grasping an American flag in its talons. String, thread and yarn suspend natural and man-made objects, bits of abalone shell, feathers, wooden and plastic beads. Contrasting kitsch with abject, Arte Povera-like elements, the artist creates a complex aura of anger and nostalgia, attraction and repulsion.
Azzuz dives into the work with the abandon of the skateboarder and graffiti artist he once was, and the work retains an edge that aligns with those risky pursuits. His gestural line work also has a lyrical quality reminiscent of Matisse’s late paper cut-outs. Yet if Matisse’s gesture has the feel of a dance, Azzuz’s strokes and lines are more like fencing, with a parry and thrust, a rougher, jagged edge coming to the fore, particularly in a floor-mounted, laser-cut metal sculpture such as “To know was to love” (2026). According to exhibition curator Kristin Delzell, the artist feels these “allude to the debris of industrialization,” and that they are “speaking to resilience of Indigenous people.” It is true that, despite the imagery being primarily floral, these objects are not remotely joyous. Rather than embodying the freshness of flowers that might lift the spirit, these forms are jagged, jarring, the skeletal remains of what they once were.
While Azzuz’s Indigenous roots run deep and wide, like the trees he paints, his Middle Eastern/Maghreb heritage and the influence of his Libyan father, is a bit more subtle. He brings attention to that aspect of his identity primarily through the inclusion of calligraphic text elements, such as an Arabic mural across the gallery’s ceiling that welcomes members of his family and community. His own wife and children, his mother, and the gallery staff, along with artist friends all contributed to the installation.
With an abundance of work realized in such staggeringly diverse media, multiple participants, and powerful subject matter, Azzuz poses difficult questions of identity and inclusivity and raises urgent ecological concerns. Many of us wonder what kind of world we are leaving to our children. Azzuz’s aesthetic stance clearly rejects “either/or” answers and instead embraces “all of the above” speculation. “Aiy-ye-kwee” reveals Azzuz to be an informed iconoclast, one who skillfully navigates the shifting currents of the art world.
