Ayas directed, cofounded, curated, and advised several art institutes, initiatives, and exhibition platforms across the globe, including in the United States, Netherlands, China and Hong Kong, South Korea, Russia, Lithuania, and Italy.
Exploring art's role within social and political processes, Ayas is best known for conceiving inventive exhibition and biennale formats within diverse geographies, in each instance composing interdisciplinary frameworks that provide historical anchoring and engagement with local conditions.
The decision for a name change was triggered by an Open Letter to Witte de With published on 14 June 2017 by Egbert Alejandro Martina, Ramona Sno, Hodan Warsame, Patricia Schor, Amal Alhaag, and Maria Guggenbichler, and the debates that followed.
The curatorial duo announced their plans around the exhibition concept of Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, which emphasized the dialectical space between communal and artificial intelligence shaped by feminist, queer, and Indigenous knowledge.
[7] The exhibitions featured 40 new commissions by artists such as Korakrit Arunanondchai, Yin-Ju Chen, Vaginal Davis, Patricia Domínguez, Cian Dayrit, John Gerrard, Trajal Harrell, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Gözde İlkin, Sangdon Kim, Liliane Lijn, Candice Lin, Emo de Medeiros, Ana María Millán, Kira Nova, Ana Prvacki, Fernando Palma Rodríguez, Outi Pieski, Angelo Plessas, Gala Porras-Kim, Judy Radul, Sahej Rahal, Jacolby Satterwhite, Alexandra Sukhareva, Sissel Tolaas, Cecilia Vicuña, and Shen Xin, as well as choreographers such as eightOS, Nasa4nasa, and Cecilia Bengolea.
With her tenure starting, she commissioned and curated long-term research projects, solo and group exhibitions and ambitious live performance programs, including Kunsthalle for Music by Ari Benjamin Meyers (2017-2018),[11] The Music of Ramon Raquello and his Orchestra by Eric Baudelaire (2017), Öğüt & Macuga by Ahmet Öğüt and Goshka Macuga (2017), The Ten Murders of Josephine by Rana Hamadeh (2017), As If It Were by Bik Van der Pol(2016), Relational Stalinism -The Musical by Michael Portnoy (2016), three-part Art in the Age of...series (with focus on energy and raw materials, asymmetric warfare and planetary computation) (2015), Bit Rot by Douglas Coupland[12] (2015), Character is Fate by Willem de Rooij (2015), Moderation(s) by artist Heman Chong (with Spring, Hong Kong, 2012-2014); Dai Hanzhi: 5000 Artists (curated by Marianne Brouwer, with UCCA, Beijing, 2014); The Humans – a theatrical play by writer and artist Alexandre Singh[13] – and its monthly summits Causeries (2012-2013); the open archive and collection Tulkus 1880 to 2018 by artist Paola Pivi (with Castello di Rivoli and Arthub Asia, 2013-2018),[14] Blueprints by Qiu Zhijie (2012) as well as the award-winning exhibition The Temptation of AA Bronson (2013).
Ayas is the founding co-curator (with the late Neery Melkonian) of the Blind Dates Project – an artistic platform dedicated to tackling what remains of the peoples, places, and cultures of the Ottoman Empire (1299-1923).
[21] Ayas was also a curator at the large Spring Workshop (Hong Kong, a non-profit arts space committed to an international cross-disciplinary program of artist and curatorial residencies, exhibitions, music, and talks.
She consulted on residencies at Spring Workshop, including collaborations with artists such as Wu Tsang, Qiu Zhijie, Christodoulos Panayiotou, and Heman Chong, among others, working alongside Founder Mimi Brown.