Sarah Abu Abdallah
Artist
Sarah Abu Abdallah is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice investigates the sociocultural conditions of Saudi Arabia. Abu Abdallah analyzes the kingdom’s changing landscape, which has become a heterotopic allegory in her work. Working across video, painting, and installations, her interests are centered on generating associations of the poetic and the absurd, integrating conversations she has with friends, family, and her community into her collaborative pieces. She creates speculative spaces and narrative assemblages based on fragments of reality colored by absurdity and awkwardness, drawing upon the forms of everyday life as well as her native experiences.
She works in a diaristic mode in which mundane activities, shared public spaces, and the architecture of the home are recast as relatable subjects through which she investigates the subtexts of everyday life. Abu Abdallah’s subjects can be seemingly unrelated on a surface level, however, her approach is one of abstract logic wherein outwardly abstracted fragments can be understood as outlying expressions of a significant, underlying narrative that they share.
Recent exhibitions include: “Feeling the Stones,” curated by Philip Tinari in collaboration with Wejdan Reda, Luan Shixuan, and Neil Zhang, Diriyah Biennale, Riyadh (2021); “For the First Time in a Long Time,” Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai and Kunstverein in Hamburg (2019, solo); and “Unsettled Objects,” curated by Omar Kholeif, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah (2019).
Abu Abdallah holds an MA in digital media art studies from the Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from the University of Sharjah’s College of Art and Design. She has undertaken several residencies, including Tokyo A La Carte: The Backers Foundation and AIT Residence Program and the Creative Exchange Lab residency at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.
Her work can be found in the collections of the Greenbox Museum, Amsterdam and the Sharjah Art Foundation.
