Visual artist Oreet Ashery was born in west Jerusalem in 1966. Ashery studied Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, followed by an MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, and a PhD from Reading School of Art at the University of Reading. Their practice includes video, 2D image-making, performance and assemblages. The work explores ideological, social and gender constructions, and draws on Ashery’s personal history and identity, such as taking on a fictional orthodox Jewish male persona called Marcus Fisher (Dancing with Men and Marcus Fisher/Say Cheese).
Ashery’s performance of The World is Flooding at Tate Modern in 2014, was followed by the exhibition Animal with a Language at Waterside Contemporary.
In 2017 Ashery won the Jarman Award for the work Revisiting Genesis, exhibited in London and elsewhere (2016-18), and in 2020 they were awarded a Turner Bursary for their contribution to the exhibition Misbehaving Bodies: Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery at the Wellcome Collection in London. Their work has been exhibited internationally including at KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin, the Brooklyn Museum, New York; Venice Biennial, and the Freud Museum, London.
