Randa Maddah Syrian, b. 1983

Biography
Randa Maddah

Randa Maddah is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, sculpture, video and installation. Her work frequently draws on elements of the natural world, suspended objects and circular forms, using these motifs to think through cycles of return, transformation and continuity. Nature operates in her practice as an active force, shaping both visual language and conceptual structure. These formal concerns intersect with the political and social conditions that have shaped her life and work.

 

Raised in the Golan Heights, Maddah’s practice is informed by the realities of occupation and by the instability produced through contested borders. Her work examines displacement, fractured belonging and the effects of prolonged political pressure on everyday life, addressing how personal experience is shaped by larger historical and territorial forces. Across media, she uses image-making as a way to register lived conditions and to reconsider how histories are carried, interrupted and reconfigured.

 

Maddah is a graduate of the Adham Ismail Center in Damascus and completed her undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University in 2005, followed by further training at the Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. She received her Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the National School of Fine Arts in Paris in 2020.

 

Her work has been presented in significant solo and group exhibitions internationally. Selected solo exhibitions include Hanging Gardens at Tabari Artspace, Dubai (2024); A Hair Tie at Gallery One, Ramallah (2016); and Pencil on Paper at Europia Gallery, Paris (2015). Her work has also been featured in major institutional group exhibitions, including Dislocations at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2024); Formes de la ruine at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon (2023); Exposition des 10 lauréats des prix et bourses des Amis des Beaux-Arts de Paris at the Chapelle des Petits-Augustins, Paris (2021); and Mémoires partagées at the Institut du monde arabe, Paris (2020). She has also participated in the Palest’In & Out Festival in Paris and Morocco.

Maddah was selected as one of the A M Qattan Foundation’s 12 Young Artists of the Year and received the Prize for Excellence and the International Grand Prize at the TAKIFUJI Art Award in Tokyo. Her work is held in public and private collections internationally, including the Barjeel Art Foundation, KADIST, the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), the Institut du monde arabe, the New York Public Library, and the Claude Lemand Foundation.


EDUCATION

2020, MFA, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Paris, France

2007, Printmaking studies, Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem

2005, BFA, Sculpture Department, Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus University, Damascus, Syria

Works
  • Hanging Gardens
    Hanging Gardens
Exhibitions
Video