Born and raised in Saudi, the work of the Palestinian artist Ayman Yossri Daydban reflects on belonging, identity, and the migration of form in the Arab world. 

His last name, Daydban, can be translated as “guard” or “watchman”, and became a central concept in much of his early work. He positioned himself as a watchman, as if he were observing the viewer in the exhibition space. This separation and proximity created a phenomenological tension within his work. In other installations, he drew on found objects to demonstrate how visual languages take form and travel, using as his example the tropes and imagery from Egyptian cinema. 

Daydban has lately shifted his focus to concepts including collective memory, belonging and identity, again in relation to cultural heritage, defining his place in a broader regional and global setting.

He is now one of the elder statesmen of the Saudi arts scene, having worked in the Kingdom since 1990, where he later obtained his Saudi nationality in 2022. 

His artworks are part of the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum and Centre Pompidou, The British Museum, amongst others.