Naiya lives and works in Oxford, UK. b. 2003, Watford, UK.
For all inquiries:
naiyaellisw@gmail.com
Instagram
Education
2023 - 2026 BFA Fine Art, Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford
2022 - 2023 Foundation Diploma in Fine Art, Trowbridge College
Selected Exhibitions
2026
Ruskin BFA Degree Show 26’, Oxford
'Exhibition 005', group show, Worcester College, Oxford
'Edgelands', duo show, Belsyre Garage, Oxford
2025
'Interim', group show, Fusion Arts Oxford, 15 Park End St, Oxford
'Exhibition 004', group show, Worcester College, Oxford
'Dampier Resurrected', solo show, Dolphin Gallery, St. John's College, Oxford
2024
'Intertidal Domestics', solo film screening, The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford
'Ruskin Prelims Exhibition', group show, The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford
'Anatomy', group show, The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford
2023
'Trowbridge 23', group show, Trowbridge College, Wiltshire
Awards
Modern Art Oxford Platform Graduate Award, 2026 ORB Art Prize (sponsored by Sotheby’s, selected by a panel of judges from Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Galleries & the Royal Academy) - Third Place, 2026
Egerton Coghill Landscape Prize - Winner, 2025
Philip Fothergill Award - Winner, 2025
Work included in
‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’, Art Film & Music, JdP Music Building, Oxford ‘Letters to Living Islands’, LIVE x EMPRES with Suzanne Triester film screening, Modern Art Oxford, 2026 'Càrn Na Mnà', Unquiet Press Issue II, 2026
'Will-o'-the-wisp', Ruskin Riso Collection, Weston Library, Oxford, 2026
'Letters to Living Islands', Ruskin Shorts film screening, Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford, 2026
'Ceasg Ultrasound', Alternative Futures, Riso Collection, Weston Library, Oxford, 2025
'I remember the smell of my natal streams', group film screening, Common Ground, Oxford
'Salmon Nurseries', These Accents, 2024
Naiya treats living materials as active co-agents in her installations, hovering at an edge of sight where places are sensed before they are fully seen, images are misremembered, and boundaries slip in and out of view. Her practice spans across installation, textiles, moving image, and writing.
Growing up on a narrowboat on British canals informs her sensitivity to fluctuating watery systems and sets the rhythms of her making: field margins, floodplains behind carparks, not quite rural not quite urban. Often using satellite imagery as a point of departure, she gathers together a bricolage of organic and petrochemical materials that emulates the natural as if it were an artefact that has been excavated or inherited. Through collective sensing workshops, she reimagines cartography as a communal, performative process, asking how we might attune to landscapes where water is constantly redrawing the map.