Dave Eassa
[Image description: Dave, a Middle Eastern man with short hair and a brown beard, wears a pink shirt and beams at the camera.]
Dave Eassa is a visual artist and cultural worker that investigates relationships, social structures, and memories through painting, sculpture, and in community. His work explores all the parts of being human; the good, the bad, and the ugly, the things that are sometimes too big to say out loud, sometimes are too quiet to make a noise, and everything in between. His paintings and sculpture simultaneously allow the viewer space for personal reflection and encourage a broader look outward at the shared human experience.
Extending work beyond the studio and into the community is an integral part of Eassa’s practice. He leverages the arts, education, and public programs to build inclusive and equitable relationships between institutions and communities in Baltimore City as well as abroad in Jordan and Lebanon. His work seeks to disrupt existing social systems through the power of human connection and the arts. Currently, he is the Director of Philanthropy and Engagement at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in San Diego, CA.
Eassa has presented solo exhibitions along the East Coast, participated in group exhibitions across the United States, and international galleries. In 2019, he was a Mentor Artist with the Arc Baltimore’s Beyond the Walls program, mentoring artist Jules Hinmon. Other artist in residence experiences include Space Gallery in Portland, ME and ACRE in Steuben, WI. He has public sculpture on view at the CHM Sculpture Park and Harwood Community Garden, both in Baltimore, MD, as well as Founder’s Park in Johnson City, TN. He has received numerous grants and fellowship opportunities for his studio practice as well as his initiatives within the Maryland Prison System. Launching in 2021, Eassa was invited to join the multi-year Global Innovations on Youth Violence, Safety, and Justice Taskforce supported by MacArthur Foundation, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the David Rockefeller Fund as a Salzburg Global Fellow. Most recently he was an artist in residence with 7Hills, an arts and skateboarding based organization in Amman, Jordan for the summer of 2021, working with local, refugee and immigrant youth on arts programming, sculpture workshops, and a large scale collaborative mural in downtown Amman.
Read about his work on HereIn: