Duo Sawsan Al Bahar and Bahar Al Bahar’s evolving and interdisciplinary practice is centred on the analogue-digital, and the material, formal and conceptual crossovers in between. Their site-specific installations ask questions about the qualities of time, place and displacement in the Middle East, often through explorations of intangible heritage and culture.
Born in Damascus (1990 and 1991) and raised in the UAE, the siblings are both architects, artists and researchers. They graduated together with a BA in Architecture from the American University of Sharjah in 2013, after which Sawsan, a SEAF fellow (2015), studied academic drawing at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence (2018-19), and Bahar pursued a Master in Integrative Technologies and Architectural Design Research at ITECH Stuttgart (2015-17). Soon after Sawsan established her art practice in Dubai, a d Bahar established Robocraft in 2018, a digital fabrication and design practice between Berlin and the UAE. The two often work as a collective and collaborate with craftspeople around the world, creating works that are grounded in material and cultural research but move between art, craft, design and digital fabrication.
Between them Bahar and Sawsan have worked, published and exhibited nationally and globally, most recently shortlisted for the Richard Mille Art Prize in 2023 for their artwork “Waterdust” exhibited at the Louvre Abu Dhabi. In 2022, Sawsan was awarded the Massimiliano Galliani Prize for Drawing under 35, while Bahar’s Masters group project ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2016/17 was published and featured in Archdaily, Dezeen and Design Boom.