Sara Naim

Sara Naim’s practice is inherently multidisciplinary: photographs are sculptural, sculptures are painterly, and paintings reference photography. She is interested in how we construct meaning through inherited frameworks such as language, symbols, and ideologies, and how these paradigms shape our understanding of self and world.

She often uses technological glitches as metaphors for the limits of language, which can never capture intuition. This speaks to a broader inquiry into how we perceive and explain ourselves through representation and symbols rather than through actualities.

Naim uses magnification instruments to participate in the advancement of “eyes,” which began with the planet having no sight—from photoreceptors growing into multicellular organisms and cells forming eyes, to humans inventing technological eyes such as microscopes to observe both smaller and larger scales.

Drawing on these evolving perceptions, she examines the assumption that proximity is synonymous with clarity, proposing instead that the closer we look, the more abstract things become. This tension between proximity and distance, materialised through pixelation and scale, reflects her own relationship with her homeland, Syria, which until recently had been inaccessible for 15 years.

At its core, her work considers how rigid notions of separateness operate across individual, social, and national frameworks. Natural motifs—particularly flowers—appear throughout her work as a means of linking personal ancestry to broader geopolitical conditions. Sara Naim explores how the roots of people and the roots of plants operate across borders. As flora cross borders and skin cells are absorbed into landscapes, the idea of fixed boundaries—both political and bodily—comes into question.

Naim received her MFA from The Slade School of Fine Art, London (2014), and completed a bachelor’s in photography from London College of Communication.

Her selected solo shows include Rose Tinted, The Third Line, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Volt Eastbourne, Eastbourne, UK (2022); Building Blocks, The Third Line, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2019); Reaction, Parafin, London, UK (2018); When Heartstrings Collapse, The Third Line, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2016); Heartstrings, Hayward Gallery Concrete, London, UK (2016).

Selected group shows include Taoyuan International Art Award, Taiwan (2023); There Goes the Neighbourhood, Indigo + Madder, London, UK (2022); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, UK (2022); Jeddah Photo 2022, Athr Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2022); Portrait of a Nation II, Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (ADMAF), Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (2022); Science Fictions, Centre Photographique Rouen, Normandie, France (2019), Contemporary Photography from the Arab World, Katzen Arts Center, American University Museum, Washington D.C., USA (2018); Artificial Impressions, Stedelijk Museum Breda, Breda, Netherlands (2018); Chambre 10, Sans Titre, Paris, France; Secular Icons in an Age of Moral Uncertainty, Parafin, London, UK (2017).

Art residencies include Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris (2019, 2018, 2016), and Beirut Art Residency (2015). Naim was commissioned by Alserkal Avenue for the January Artist Takeover (2020), and for Hospital Rooms London (2017). She participated in Artissima (2020) as a solo presentation, Not Cancelled, Frieze London (2019, 2017), Frieze New York (2017), and FIAC (2015).

Sara Lives and works between London and Dubai.