Aya Alshalal is an Iraqi-Canadian jewellery designer and multidisciplinary artist based in London, who recently completed her MA in Jewellery Design at Central Saint Martins following a background in Architecture and Material Art & Design. Working at the intersection of contemporary jewellery, craft, and cultural research, her practice is informed by a family history of curating, collecting and preserving tribal and Bedouin crafts, jewellery, silversmithing traditions, textiles, and material culture from Iraq and the wider SWANA region.

Her work reinterprets endangered Iraqi and Bedouin jewellery traditions by combining traditional craft with sculptural/experimental forms and digital processes. By creating speculative collections that preserve and evolve cultural heritage for contemporary fashion cultures and alternative diasporic communities, Alshalal explores how ancestral knowledge can remain relevant through changing identities, modes of dress, and cultural expression.