Born in Jordan in 1975, Hazem Nemrawi lives and works in Amman. He received his BA in Fine Arts from Yarmouk University in 1997 and returned to the university for a higher diploma in fine art in 2017. His practice moves across sculpture, watercolor, printmaking, ceramics, and installation, but it is in stone that he has held his longest conversation.

Nemrawi carves into blocks of banded and veined stone, taking direction from what is already inside the material rather than overriding it. His forms are abstract without being inert: a body rising into a fold, an opening where a shoulder might turn, a wing of unworked rock left rough against a plane polished to water. Where the mineral bands run green, copper, and amber, he lets them read as weather, as current, as the record of pressure held over an unimaginable stretch of time. The finished surface does two things at once: it hides the labor and reveals the geology.

That attention to material has carried Nemrawi’s work into public space. His sculptures stand permanently in King Hussein Park in Amman (2010), at Philadelphia University (2013) and the University of Jordan (2014), and in Baku, Azerbaijan, following the 2nd International Stone Symposium, Music in Stone, in 2017. He has taken part in the 5th and 6th International Sculpture Symposiums in Amman (2010, 2014), the Symposium Méditerranéen des Ateliers d'Art Contemporain in Tunisia (2017), and Art Quarter in Germany (2015).

His work has been shown at Beauté du Matin and Dar Tounis in Paris (2018), the Kuwait International Forum (2017), Conexiones in Las Palmas, Spain (2015), Jordanian Contemporary Art at the Bahrain Museum (2012), the Sharjah International Biennial (2001), and the Beirut International Biennial (1999). His installation Siege was presented at the Delfina Foundation in London in 2002. Earlier solo exhibitions include Orfali Gallery (2005), Al Madina Gallery (2007), and Fann Wa Chai (2016) in Amman, and Espace Libre in Paris (2017). He was honored at the Hamsa Arts Festival in Cairo in 2021.

Alongside his studio practice, Nemrawi has taught for more than two decades: at the Institute of Fine Arts under Jordan's Ministry of Culture, Al Balqa' Applied University, the Canadian International School, and the Haya Cultural Center. He also works as an illustrator of children's books and magazines.