Surrealist Cosmologies

  • Randa Maddah’s

    Surrealist Cosmologies

  • Randa Maddah is a Paris-based artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture and installation, informed by her upbringing in Majdal Shams in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

    Randa Maddah is a Paris-based artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture and installation, informed by her upbringing in Majdal Shams in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Raised within the Druze community, where beliefs centre on cycles of reincarnation and spiritual continuity, her work approaches life, death and return as interconnected states. Her practice has been presented internationally, including at Palais de Tokyo. Across media, Randa constructs immersive pictorial worlds that bring together political reality, personal memory and speculative imagination.

     
  • Randa Maddah Hanging Gardens, Cherry Orchard, 2026 Oil on canvas 200 x 200 cm
    Randa Maddah
    Hanging Gardens, Cherry Orchard, 2026
    Oil on canvas
    200 x 200 cm
  • Working on oil on canvas, Randa draws on the visual languages of surrealism and Middle Eastern miniature painting, forming intimate, self-contained worlds. Within these compressed fields, she explores displacement, rebirth and spiritual continuity, shaped by her lived experience of occupation and distance from home. Her work engages a wide intellectual field, from Mesopotamian and Sumerian mythologies to writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Edward Said, whose reflections on imagination, exile and belonging resonate within her practice. 

     
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens #20, 2023-2024
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens #20, 2023-2024
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens #17, 2023-2024
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens #17, 2023-2024
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens #19, 2023-2024
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens #19, 2023-2024
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens #18, 2023-2024
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens #18, 2023-2024
  • The artist sees nature as a site through which metamorphosis is possible and where human life remains inseparable from its...

    The artist sees nature as a site through which metamorphosis is possible and where human life remains inseparable from its environment. Motifs form a symbolic ecology throughout her practice. Anamorphic creatures move through orchards and cherry trees, alongside hybrid figures that shift between human, animal and vegetal states. The cherry tree, for example, is a site of tension, its delicate bloom set against dense, watchful skies, evoking cycles of drought and endurance within land tinged by conflict, while still carrying traces of fertility and abundance.

     

     

     The interconnection of animal and human forms reinforces a sense of continuity, dissolving boundaries and sustaining a shared existence within the natural world. Her compositions draw on the narrative traditions of miniature painting, where multiple temporalities coexist within a single frame. Figures elongate, merge with their surroundings or float between states, while others recede into the ground. These recurring bodies signal transformation; they are in flux, continuously reconfigured by their environment.

  • Randa Maddah Hanging Gardens, 2025 Oil on canvas 90 x 200 cm ( Each )
    Randa Maddah
    Hanging Gardens, 2025
    Oil on canvas
    90 x 200 cm ( Each )
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #15, 2026
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #15, 2026
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #18, 2026
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #18, 2026
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #17, 2026
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #17, 2026
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #16, 2026
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #16, 2026
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #9, 2026
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #9, 2026
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #4, 2026
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #4, 2026
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #3, 2026
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #3, 2026
    • Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #2, 2026
      Randa Maddah, Hanging Gardens, The Keepers #2, 2026