Sara Abdu captures sensorial and visceral traces through the meditative process of her work. By engaging with sensory mnemonic triggers and tangible objects as sites of memory, she uses the body as a locus to encapsulate where memory resides. This negotiation with memory seeks to uncover its inception. She frames temporality as a rational structure, emphasizing the transient nature of memory and forgetting as a way to reconcile with the world around us.
Abdu’s exploration of the body as a psychogeographical site of memory; one that, when probed, seeks to uncover its origins. It brings to light the delicate balance between the ephemeral and the tangible. Memory fleets and is forgotten, yet through the act of tracing its emergence, she attempts to tether the fleeting to the concrete. By inscribing henna strokes and ink markings or encapsulating a scent of the past, she challenges the impermanence of memory, allowing us to coexist with these memories in the present moment, and transforming the body into an archival terrain where the past resists erosion.
Recently, Abdu explores the intangibility of memory in relation to the spaces that the body inhabits. Drawing on the textures, scents, and thresholds of the home, Abdu reconstructs what might be called an interior archaeology. Through her most recent solo exhibition, Intimate Architectures of Belonging, Abdu sets to stage the similarities in which architecture behaves like memory; unstable, porous, and forever negotiating between presence and absence.
Abdu holds a Diploma in Graphic Design and Digital Art and a Bachelor of Arts in English Language & Literature. In 2017, Abdu was an artist in residence at La Cité internationale des Arts in Paris, France. In 2021, she was an artist in residence at Intermix in Riyadh .
Selected exhibitions include Intimate Architectures of Belonging (solo), ATHR Gallery, Al Ula, KSA, 2025; Space Without Measure, Desert X, Al Ula, KSA, 2025; The Desert has No Shadow, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, Austria, 2025; After Rain, Diriyah Biennale, Riyadh, KSA, 2024; Strangers in the Palace, International Biennale of Contemporary Art of the South, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Amakin, curated by Ventia Porter, Ithra, Dammam, KSA, 2022; Artissima Art, Torino, Italy, 2021; I Only Meant to Visit (solo), Cromwell Place, London, UK; I Only Meant To Visit (solo), 21,39. ATHR Gallery, Jeddah, KSA, 2021; Zamakan, Ithra, Damam, KSA, 2019; and The Intangible Bonds in Our Existence (solo), ATHR Gallery, Jedah, KSA, 2014.
Abdu’s work can be found in the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abdul Latif Jameel Foundation, the BIC Collection, the Greenbox Museum and the Imago Mundi Collection.
Abdu’s work can be found in the BIC Art Collection.