Hayat Osamah: Stirring Up a Quiet Revolution in Creativity

Embedded in a creative scene defined by acceleration and spectacle, Hayat Osamah’s work unfolds at an entirely different rhythm. The Riyadh-based artist moves gently through her worlds – fashion, film, visual art, and performance – tracing the delicate boundaries between documentation and expression. Her practice, grounded in tactility and intuition, resists grand gestures in favour of something rarer: stillness.

“Creating looks was my first medium of expression,” she says. “Photography followed. It was inseparable, another way to tell the same story.” That story has always been deeply personal and yet quietly collective. A self-taught photographer who first came to prominence through her portrait work in Saudi Arabia, Osamah has steadily evolved into one of the region’s most thoughtful multidisciplinary artists. Her approach – intimate, textural, and introspective – has made her both celebrated and, at times, controversial.

In a society negotiating the boundaries of image and identity, her work touches nerves as much as it opens eyes. To photograph the body, to restage femininity or ritual, to reimagine softness as power—these are acts that carry a certain charge in the Saudi context. Yet Osamah’s response has never been reactionary. Her art speaks not in confrontation, but in invitation. “I hope my work leaves space for reflection and compassion to grow,” she says. “It’s a reminder of connection—to self, to others, to the environment.”

For Osamah, art is less a solitary pursuit than a shared act of trust. “Collaboration has always been at the heart of my process,” she explains. “Whether through workshops, shared projects, or documenting people close to me, I see my work as part of a collective conversation rather than an individual statement.” This ethos found form in Soft Gates, her installation at the Islamic Arts Biennale 2025, which she describes as a “turning point”. 

The piece, created with family and friends, wove together light, textile, and space to explore thresholds—both physical and spiritual. “It carried both personal and spiritual weight,” she recalls. “It emphasised the importance of creating an environment built on community, trust, and understanding. The working process itself mirrored the values of the work.” Her current projects build on that same sensitivity. 

Osamah is developing a series of documentation and book projects while continuing her research into the relationship between plants and humans, an inquiry that began during her residency with the Visual Arts Commission. “It’s an ongoing inquiry into memory, the body, story, the seen, and the hidden, and how nature mirrors our own states of being,” she explains. “Connection is where the work breathes,” she adds, reflecting on what fuels her creative process.

In recent years, Osamah has become emblematic of a generation of Saudi artists reshaping how creativity is perceived at home and abroad. “I want to keep creating spaces, visual or communal, that allow for care and connection,” she says. “To keep questioning how we see, listen, and exist with one another.” If some artists shout their revolutions, Osamah whispers hers—through light, texture, and the steady insistence that beauty and integrity can quietly change a culture.