b. 1997, Leicester, UK

Biography

Sarah al-Sarraj is a visual artist and cultural worker. Her practice spans painting, comics, and moving image. She is currently developing an animation practice having been awarded a grant from the Arts Council. Her practice cultivates a visual language that aims to disrupt hierarchies of authority and knowledge production while imagining liberated futures. She is currently exploring notions of subjectivity, spirituality, and metaphysics, as they relate to the natural world. She works on building liberatory community-led public health at Healing Justice London and is an incoming Trustee at the Inclusive Mosque Initiative. She previously worked at Forensic Architecture and within Palestinian advocacy.

CV

Awards and Residencies

Developing Your Creative Practice Grant, Arts Council England | 2022 (total amount: £8,450)

New Contemporaries 2022 (rescinded due to ethical reasons)

Graduate Residency, Two Queens | 2022

AMPlify Digital Residency, Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge | 2021

Exhibitions, Screenings and Projects

‘Help Is On The Way, Dear’, Contemporary Other, Birmingham | 2023

‘Queer Futures’, Kohl Journal, academic journal addressing gender in the SWANA region, Vol.9 No.1, (designer for forthcoming issue) | 2023

‘Queer Futures’, Kohl Writing Group | 2023

An Intimacy with Aliveness, Phytology Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, London (billboard commission) | 2023

Wholeness, 2022 (screenings):

  • CineAstra Festival, Glasgow Women’s Library | 2023

  • Arab Women Artists Now (AWAN), Richmix, London | 2023

  • The NAWAL, REFERENCE.POINT 180, London | 2022

  • Two Queens, Two Screens, Two Queens Leicester | 2022

  • F(r)ictions, Camden Arts Centre, London | 2022

  • Mokumkraakt Squatters Collective, Amsterdam | 2022

  • Good Wickedry, TAPE Collective, Online | 2022

  • Mega Mega, Tom Thumb Theatre, Margate | 2022

  • AMPlify Showcase, Wysing Arts Centre, Online | 2022

Sinkhole, Blunderbuss, Two Queens, Leicester (exhibition) | 2022

Terra Ersetu, One More With Feeling, Margate (exhibition) | 2022

Workshops and Panels

‘Human Rights Iftar’, Amnesty International and Inclusive Mosque Initiative, London (panel discussion with Shaista Aziz, Sumayyah Zannath, Nabila Hanson, moderated by Hareem Ghani) | 2024

‘Creative Strategies for Solidarity and Liberation’, Mosaic Rooms, London (workshop) | 2023

‘A Way Forward: Healing Justice for Creative Practice’, ICF @ Block 336, London (workshop) | 2023

‘Imagining Nature in the Future: Sci FI & Zine Making’, Rehearsing Freedoms Festival, London (workshop facilitated with Bella Normark) | 2023

‘Narrative Building for Bold and Powerful Movements,’ Rehearsing Freedoms Festival, London (panel discussion with Sarah Joynt-Bowe, Micha Frazer-Carroll, Alex J. Bledsoe, chaired by Panthea Lee), 2023

The Conch, South London Gallery (artist talk with Mohammed Rahman and Emmanuel Awuni) | 2022

Education

  • Radical Film School

    2023

  • Introduction to 2D Animation, CG Spectrum

    2023

  • Associates Programme, Open School East

    2023

  • BASc in Arts and Sciences, University College London (1:1)

    Thesis: ‘How does contemporary Palestinian moving image explore themes of land and memory to respond to colonial occupation?’

    2016-2019

Curation

Independently:

  • Baesianz Community Iftar, Jumbi Peckham, London | 2024

  • Into Disorder: An Evening Screening at the Tom Thumb Theatre, Margate | 2022

    Introduced by Jack Halberstam featuring the work of Meriem Bennani, Adham Faramawy, Ufuoma Essi, Sweatmother.

  • Anticolonial Film Discussion Group | 2020-21

    Films included: Soleil Ô (1967), The Battle of Algiers (1966), Soy Cuba (1964)

  • Fastforward Feminism | 2018-2019, Festival and Reading Group, Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL

    3-day festival.

With Healing Justice Ldn (as Programme Coordinator):

  • Rehearsing Futures: Experiments in Imagination with Abbas Zahedi, Gabriella Gomez-Mont and Marai Larasi, chaired by David A. Bailey, Conway Hall | 2023

  • Rehearsing Futures: Life Affirming Community Practice with Sanah Ahsan, Andre Anderson, Kwame Lowe, chaired by Micha Frazer-Carroll, Whitechapel Gallery | 2023

  • Deaths By Welfare Project Artist Commission | 2022

  • Sex and Rage: Rooted Heart Series | 2022

  • Plant Medicine, Healing, and Liberation: Dismantling Drugs Based Police Violence with Camille Barton |

    2021

With Forensic Architecture (as Programme Assistant):

  • ‘Assembled Practices’, exhibition A.M. Qattan Foundation, Ramallah, Palestine | 2020

  • ‘True To Scale’, exhibition, Museum of Art and Design, Miami, USA | 2020