Sawsan asks questions about the qualities of time, place and displacement as they occur to people of the Middle East. Her work addresses a longstanding preoccupation with a notion of home as myth, often centering on her own life and family history.
Sawsan Al Bahar was born in Damascus, in 1990, and raised in the UAE. She received a bachelor's in Architecture from the American University of Sharjah in 2013 and later studied academic drawing at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence. As an artist, architect and researcher, Sawsan’s studio practice centres on drawing and site-specific installation, bridging the three disciplines. Her current interest lies in the materiality and ephemerality of drawing, focusing on explorations of line, composition, form and plasticity.
Sawsan asks questions about the qualities of time, place and displacement as they occur to people of the Middle East. Her work addresses a longstanding preoccupation with a notion of home as myth, often centering on her own life and family history.
Sawsan was awarded the Massimiliano Galliani Prize for Drawing under 35 in 2022 and shortlisted for the Richard Mille Art Prize in 2023. She has held solo exhibitions “33 songs, 99 words”, Maraya Art Center, Sharjah (2023); “Knocking on Doors”, Casa Cavezzi, Montecchio Emilia (2023); and “Talaliya”, Firetti Contemporary (2022). She has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, most recently Art Here (2023) at Louvre Abu Dhabi; Abu Dhabi Art (2023), “Breaking Boundaries”, Firetti Contemporary (2023), “Wood You Rather Be Happy?” Firetti Contemporary (2023), and “The Continuous Line”, Firetti Contemporary | Art Verona, (2022).