Overview
Born in Berlin in 1962, Susan Hefuna grew up in Egypt, Germany, and Austria. In 1992, she completed a postgraduate degree in multimedia at the Institut für Neue Medien, Städelschule, Frankfurt, where she studied under artist, curator, and theoretician Peter Weibel. 

In drawings, installations, performances, photographs, sculptures, and videos, Hefuna draws on her mixed heritage to ponder the intersection of location and identity. She aims at a spiritual, open-ended, and timeless art that also illuminates current sociopolitical issues.

Hefuna’s works often incorporate the form or image of the characteristically Mashrabiya, a carved wood or stone architectural latticework screen, which she uses to investigate aesthetic tradition, national custom, and the exchanged gaze.  

Hefuna regards drawing as a cornerstone of her practice and in an ongoing body of work on tracing paper that includes her Buildings and Cityscapes series, presents abstracted images inspired by microscopic molecular and biological—as well as larger architectural—forms.  The drawings’ delicate ink lines constitute a reflection on structure in every sense of the word. Hefuna has characterized her drawings in general as being especially related to her life and travels, but declines to identify them with particular events or locations. “A drawing has no nationality,” she told Flash Art magazine in 2010, “and has no time and space. It is its own universe.”
Works
Exhibitions
Biography
Susan Hefuna, b.1962, New York, lives and works in Cairo, Egypt; Dusseldorf, Germany and New York, USA. 
 

Major exhibitions include; Traces of Egypt (solo), Grand Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt (2023); Anagrams (solo), British Museum London, UK (2023); The Mashrabiya Project (group), Museum for Art in Wood, Philadelphia, USA (2023); From Dürer to Warhol Masterpieces from the Graphische Sammlung (group), ETH Zürich, MASILugano, Lugano, Switzerland (2023); In the Heart of Another Country (group), Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany (2023); Venedigsche Sterne: Kunst und Stickerei, Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur, Switzerland (2022); Landscapes (solo), Pi Artworks, London, UK (2021); BE ONE (solo), Kunsthallte Pforzheim, Pforzheim, Germany (2021); Kairos (solo), Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, Germany (2021); TREES DIE STAND Plants and humans, Pi Artworks, London, UK (2021); Reflections, Contemporary Art of Middle East and North Africa, The British Museum, London, UK (2021); 3 Elements (solo), Shigeru Yokota Gallery, Tokio, Japan (2020); Susan Hefuna: Crossroads (solo), Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, Germany (2020); Susan Hefuna: Thought (solo), Pi Artworks London, London Collective on Vortic Collect, UK; Global(e) Resistance, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2020); Textiles (solo), Pi Artworks London, UK (2019); Sanctuary, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada (2020); Susan Hefuna: Gebilde (solo), Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel, Switzerland (2019); Screens (solo), Merdiven Art Space, Istanbul, Turkey (2019); Climbing Through the Tide, Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis, Tunesia (2019); But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa, Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, Galleria d'Arte Moderna Milano, Italy (2018); Long Winding Journeys: Contemporary Art and the Islamic Tradition, Katonah Museum of Art, New York, USA (2018); TOGATHER (solo), Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, UK (2017); Sol LeWitt - A tribute(group), Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Den Haag, The Netherlands (2016); Imperfect Chronology, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2016); Susan Hefuna: Crossroads 2002-2015 (solo), Pi Artworks London, UK (2016); But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise, Guggenheim New York, USA (2016); The Strange and the Familiar (solo), UBS Schloss Wolfsberg, Switzerland (2015); Contemporary Art of the Middle East, LACMA, Los Angeles, USA (2015); Susan Hefuna: Another Place (solo), Sharjah Art Foundation, Bait Al Serkal, Sharjah (2014); Buildings(solo), Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Germany (2014); Here and Elsewhere, New Museum, New York, USA (2014); Nouvelles Vagues- Champs Elysees, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2013);  On the Edgware Road, Serpentine Gallery, London, UK (2012); Edgware Road@Cairo 2010/1431 (solo), The Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt (2010); On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2010); Fare Mondi, 53rd Venice Biennial, Italy (2009); and The Jameel Art Prize, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2009).

Public collections include; Graphische Sammmlung ETH, Zurich, Switzerland; Tate Modern, London, UK; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, UAE; Guggenheim NY, USA; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NY, USA; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA; LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), CA, USA; The Louvre Museum, Paris, France; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; Barjeel Art Foundation Collection, UAE, British Museum, UK and Victoria and Albert Museum, UK. 

Hefuna's work is documented in a three volume publication, Pars Pro Toto, by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist released in 2008-2014.

 

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