AISSA H. DEEBI

Aissa Deebi is a New York City artist /designer.

During the last ten years he has produced a body of work in photography, video, newmedia and the graphic arts. He is currently a visiting professor in graphic arts at, Centro de Estudios Superiores de Diseño de Monterrey, Mexico.

Aissa is conducting a PhD research in Art and Design at the University of Southampton, examining photography and migration within the New York City émigré culture, investigating questions of identity in relation to masculinity and cultural integration.

An award winning artist Aissa’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States. He has exhibitedat the Queens Museum of Art, the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea, the Tangent Gallery in Detroit, and the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia. He has also exhibited at the Haifa Museum of Contemporary Arts, the Tel Aviv Museum, the Fitcher and Mezrahi Gallery in Austria. In addition, to the University of Catania in Italy, and the Inner Mongolia Museum of Fine Arts in China.

Residing between London and New York
he is a practicing artist/ researcher and a lecture in graphic arts.
~ Monday, December 21 ~
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“This picture was taken just outside the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. There are several reasons why this place is special to me. I lived in and around Greenwich whilst I was studying at Goldsmiths College between 1993 and 1996. To me the Greenwich Meridian represents both a celebration of the wonderful and an understated acknowledgement of a slightly more embarrasing and painful reality. The wonderful for me includes memories of rolling on my side down one of the steep slopes that descend from the ledge that the Observatory sits on, during a particularly snowy spell in 1994. Another wonderful occasion would be lying in that park on a hot summers day in 1996, sunbathing with several wonderful characters who made my life at that time ‘a lot more colourful’. The embarrasing and painful would include the flatmate that I was living with in Greenwich and the state of the flat in general (with the benefit of hindsight Health and Safety would have condemned it immediately!). These two contrasting sides of my personal time spent there would contest one another on a regular basis. I used to walk up through greenwich park to this particular viewpoint on a weekly basis. I would smoke cigarettes looking out over London and try to reason my comparitively shitty existance with the vast expanse of impressive, dominating, historical and contemporary buildings that sprawled across the skyline, like a permanent reminder that you were allowed to soak up the experience of magnificence…even if you were already drowning in it’s toxic influence. I tend to go there now to be reminded of just how impressive it all is, but as a visitor not as a resident. In this picture I am with my eldest nephew. We had just been to the Maritime museum and negotiated our way up the steepest slope that had been left like a scating rink from the freezing temperatures that had hit the capital the night before. The Greenwich meridian seems a fitting representation of the fine line between madness and genius for our world today. It is possible to stand with one foot in both the eastern and western hemispeheres simply by taking a few steps from where we are standing in this photo. For 125 years the world has set it’s clocks according to the time of day that has been declared by this point. A universal reference point for keeping the world ticking. Whether this is helping to keep the transport systems functioning or whether it is for measuring the time it takes for an a local anaesthetic to take effect. For me this is something Not to take for granted and Not to forget.” James Daykin 2009

“This picture was taken just outside the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. There are several reasons why this place is special to me. I lived in and around Greenwich whilst I was studying at Goldsmiths College between 1993 and 1996. To me the Greenwich Meridian represents both a celebration of the wonderful and an understated acknowledgement of a slightly more embarrasing and painful reality. The wonderful for me includes memories of rolling on my side down one of the steep slopes that descend from the ledge that the Observatory sits on, during a particularly snowy spell in 1994. Another wonderful occasion would be lying in that park on a hot summers day in 1996, sunbathing with several wonderful characters who made my life at that time ‘a lot more colourful’. The embarrasing and painful would include the flatmate that I was living with in Greenwich and the state of the flat in general (with the benefit of hindsight Health and Safety would have condemned it immediately!). These two contrasting sides of my personal time spent there would contest one another on a regular basis. I used to walk up through greenwich park to this particular viewpoint on a weekly basis. I would smoke cigarettes looking out over London and try to reason my comparitively shitty existance with the vast expanse of impressive, dominating, historical and contemporary buildings that sprawled across the skyline, like a permanent reminder that you were allowed to soak up the experience of magnificence…even if you were already drowning in it’s toxic influence. I tend to go there now to be reminded of just how impressive it all is, but as a visitor not as a resident. In this picture I am with my eldest nephew. We had just been to the Maritime museum and negotiated our way up the steepest slope that had been left like a scating rink from the freezing temperatures that had hit the capital the night before. The Greenwich meridian seems a fitting representation of the fine line between madness and genius for our world today. It is possible to stand with one foot in both the eastern and western hemispeheres simply by taking a few steps from where we are standing in this photo. For 125 years the world has set it’s clocks according to the time of day that has been declared by this point. A universal reference point for keeping the world ticking. Whether this is helping to keep the transport systems functioning or whether it is for measuring the time it takes for an a local anaesthetic to take effect. For me this is something Not to take for granted and Not to forget.” James Daykin 2009