Naiya lives and works in Oxford, UK. b. 2003, Watford, UK.
For all inquiries: naiyaellis880@outlook.com
naiy.a on Instagram
Naiya is a multidisciplinary artist studying at The Ruskin School of Art, whose practice spans across sculpture, installation, textiles, writing and film. With a hybrid of folkloric narratives and ancestral knowledge systems, she hopes to confront our alienation from nature in a built world of salmon nurseries, Ceasgs, algae plains and kelp forests.
She seeks to reframe care as an ongoing, embodied, and entangled practice that binds us to the more-than-human, treating living materials as active co-agents in her installations. Naiya's current research takes her to the Scottish Highlands, following a current of mythical and archaelogical sources from her mother, to trace the effects of the Highland Clearances on an agrarian matriarchal community residing in Angus. Hydrofeminism, oral tradition, and ritual are soaked into her work, where knowing emerges through sensory proximity.
Selected Exhibitions:
2025
'Interim', Fusion Arts Oxford, 15 Park End St, Oxford
'Exhibition 004', Worcester College, Oxford
'Dampier Resurrected', Dolphin Gallery, St. John's College, Oxford
2024
'Intertidal Domestics' solo film screening, The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford
'I remember the smell of my natal streams' film screenings, Common Ground, Oxford
'Ruskin Prelims Exhibition', The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford
'Anatomy', group show, The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford
2023
'Trowbridge 23', group show, Trowbridge College, Wiltshire
Education:
2023 - 2026 BFA Fine Art, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford
2022 - 2023 Foundation Diploma in Fine Art, Trowbridge College, Wiltshire College & University Centre
Awards:
Egerton Coghill Landscape Prize - Winner, 2025
Philip Fothergill Award - Winner, 2025
Work included in:
'Ceasg Ultrasound', Alternative Futures, Riso Edition Collection, Weston Library, Oxford, 2025
'Salmon Nurseries', These Accents, 2024