Biography
Sarah Al-Sarraj (b. 1997) is a visual artist and cultural worker based between Pittsburgh (US) and London (UK). Her work centers on worldbuilding as a creative and critical process, where painting and immersive technologies are understood as portals to other worlds. Predicated on the belief that our world was designed in service of imperial violence, she builds new lifeworlds rooted in land, spirit, and ancestry. Currently working with game engines, she is interested in appropriating military simulation technologies to build uncolonisable realms inspired by Global Majority knowledge systems and emerging quantum thought.
Her creative practice is informed by working in movements, at organisations such as Forensic Architecture, the Inclusive Mosque Initiative and Healing Justice London. She is inspired by the tangible material potential of visionary practice in global liberation movements and she occasionally lends her hands to illustration and graphic design for various groups.
Al-Sarraj has shown her work in the UK and internationally. In 2022, her comic book ‘Sinkhole’ was selected for New Contemporaries. In 2023, she received a grant from Arts Council England to develop an animation practice, through which she began collaborating with the Mechatronic Library, a collective of intersectional feminist worldbuilders and immersive artists. Her first solo show opened at Two Queens Gallery in 2024 and she has since held solo presentations of her work at Mimosa House, the World Museum, and Longsight Art Space. In an attempt to broaden the scope of her work, she has given presentations at the UK’s National Space Centre and the World Museum. She was recently selected as a finalist for the CIRCA Prize 2025. She is currently an MFA candidate at Carnegie Mellon University.