Informed by philosophy, the science of religion, and Jungian psychology, Sarah Haddou’s work takes the form of contemporary rituals where experience, reflection on the human condition, and revelation converge.

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The artist’s French-Algerian heritage, together with her transcontinental and transcultural trajectory, infuses her visual language with a deep awareness of displacement, alienation, and invisible lineages.

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Through performance, installation, textile art, and sculpture, her work examines the tensions at the heart of human experience, held in a fragile balance between vulnerability and protection, division and reconnection, degradation and elevation.

She interrogates our relationship to the sacred and the profane in contemporary society, as well as the ways in which these systems of values shape our judgment and our relation to others.

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Her minimalist and symbolic works invite viewers into spaces of introspection. Among them, her series of “black boxes”—currently expanded through four new works in development —explores the unconscious, where the boundaries between self and other begin to dissolve.

Each work functions both as an intimate confession and a collective mirror, revealing the silent resonances that connect personal experience to broader social and metaphysical structures, where visible and invisible hierarchies respond to one another.

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Her installations are often conceived according to a quasi-liturgical structure, in which space and the visitor’s experience unfold as a ritual sequence, guided by a restrained dramaturgy that evokes the codes of the sacred without adhering to any specific religious tradition.

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Her practice unfolds as an ongoing inquiry into meaning, translated into visual forms that act as passages toward inner and collective transformation.

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Sarah Haddou (b. 1980) is a French-Algerian multidisciplinary artist whose practice has developed primarily across Europe, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. After a period working as a curator in Saudi Arabia, she settled in Lisbon, where she now lives and works while developing a new body of work.

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She first trained in costume design before studying philosophy at the Sorbonne University in Paris. Several years later, while living in the Dominican Republic, she pursued fine arts studies at Altos de Chavón, an art school affiliated with Parsons School of Design. She graduated with honors and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to continue her studies at Parsons in New York.

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During this period, her interest shifted from painting toward performance following an intensive workshop with artists Regina José Galindo and David Karmadavis, a decisive moment in the evolution of her practice. A few months later, Haddou created her first durational performance, Untouchable, which later inspired her knitted textile works.

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Her first solo exhibition, Conscience Émergente (2013), was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in Santo Domingo. The same year, she was commissioned to perform at the opening of the 27th Santo Domingo Biennial.

Since then, Haddou has participated in numerous international group exhibitions, residencies, and art fairs, including FIAC (Paris), MAD (Madrid), and the Vilnius Art Fair (Lithuania).