• Randa Maddah’s

    Surrealist Cosmologies

  • “Randa draws on the visual languages of surrealism and Middle Eastern miniature painting, forming intimate, self-contained worlds.”


    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 art 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, lived experience and speculative imagination.

     
  • For Randa, human life is inseparable from its environment, and nature is a site through which metamorphosis might be possible....

    For Randa, human life is inseparable from its environment, and nature is a site through which metamorphosis might be possible. Motifs form a symbolic ecology throughout her practice. Anamorphic creatures - captured mid-flight or dwelling on the earth - move through orchards, shifting between human, animal and vegetal states. The interconnection of animal and human forms reinforces a sense of continuity, dissolving boundaries and urging consciousness of harmony within the natural world. The cherry tree, on the other hand, is an emblem of tension, its delicate bloom set against dense, watchful skies. Here, she laments cycles of drought and endurance within land tinged by conflict, yet these mythical pastures still offer traces of fertility and promise.

    Embracing the narrative traditions of Persian miniature painting, Randa allows multiple temporalities to 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, Cherry Orchard, 2026 Oil on canvas 200 x 200 cm
    Randa Maddah
    Hanging Gardens, Cherry Orchard, 2026
    Oil on canvas
    200 x 200 cm
  • In surrealism, the floating body suggests a departure from fixed spatial and psychological coordinates, situating the figure within a realm...
    Randa Maddah
    Hanging Gardens #5, 2023-2024
    Oil on Canvas
    146 x 97 cm
    In surrealism, the floating body suggests a departure from fixed spatial and psychological coordinates, situating the figure within a realm governed by dream and the unconscious. Here, the female body floats between land and sky, levitating, inhabiting a recurring dream of Randa’s that takes us back to her childhood in Golan. Her braided hair extends upward, forming a vertical axis that links the terrestrial and the celestial, while her feathered torso sees the body approach avian form. She’s neither separate from the land nor fully contained by it, existing within a cycle of connection and reincarnation.
  • 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 )
  • Extending the visual language of her Hanging Gardens series into book form, Randa translates the sensorial and symbolic density of her paintings into a more explicitly narrative structure. Her publication has a fairytale-like cadence, moving from singular image to layered sequence; motifs recur, shift, and accumulate meaning across pages. Working through collage, hand printing, and stitched interventions, Randa’s multimedia approach lends the work an expressive, deliberately open quality, where the tactile presence of the artist’s hand is present throughout. Rooted in the landscapes and imaginaries of the Golan Heights, her book carries forward the series’ preoccupation with ecstasy, liberation, and cycles of return.
  • Randa Maddah Art Book, 2026 Mixed Medium 637 x 35 cm
    Randa Maddah
    Art Book, 2026
    Mixed Medium
    637 x 35 cm