Reem Acason

Reem Acason is an artist and fully funded Art and Media PhD researcher at University of Brighton. As of September 2026, she is pursuing a TC25 Award funded PhD titled 'Material Afterlives: The Re-activation of Archaeological Artefacts through the Diasporic Art Practices of Contemporary SWANA Women'.

Her research explores how in museum contexts, archaeological artefacts are often presented as evidence of ‘lost’ civilisations, reinforcing narratives of cultural stasis and fixed heritage, marginalising ongoing, lived relationships to material culture shaped by displacement, war, migration and diaspora. She analyses the work of SWANA diaspora women artists and they ways in which they use archeological methods to articulate the diasporic experience. 

Working as a mixed-heritage artist between Bahrain and the UK, her studio-based inquiry explores how personally, culturally and socially symbolic materials including sand, wax, gypsum, wild clay, bird nests, and traditional clothing can operate as carriers of transcultural memory and belonging, and how their dialogue with archeological artefacts may generate new understandings of hybridity and diasporic identity.

She has exhibited widely, nationally and internationally including three times at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, at ArtBab International Art Fair, Bahrain and at 35Blumen, Krefeld, Germany.