Sarah Daoui: Making Art Feel Close

Between its hushed tones and all-white walls, the art world can often feel detached, but in Sarah Daoui’s world, art is meant to feel close—human and intimate. Earlier this year, the Algerian-American art advisor and curator founded Bureau. Art, an advisory and curational firm dedicated to forging meaningful relationships between artists, collectors, and audiences through acquisitions, exhibitions, and programming. “There are so many young people who don’t realise they can simply walk into a gallery for free and ask questions,” says Daoui. “They feel unnatural having conversations about art or engaging with artists, and I want to change that.”

Her path to this point reads like a study in conviction. Before Bureau.Art, she managed Komal Shah’s acclaimed Making Their Mark exhibition in New York, curated by Cecilia Alemani, the Artistic Director of the 59th Venice Biennale. The show featured 96 works by women artists and welcomed over 50,000 visitors, including 500 New York City public school students who had never entered a museum before. “Watching them wander through the rooms, seeing themselves reflected in those works—that was the moment I knew I wanted to dedicate my life to this,” she tells Dazed MENA.

Her influences form an intergenerational lineage of conviction and fearlessness: Peggy Guggenheim for her intuitive approach to collecting and championing artists, and the bold Baya Mahieddine, whose early career remains a source of courage. Her deepest well of inspiration, however, comes from her great-grandmother, a woman who left home and rebuilt from scratch in a distant village after refusing to accept the predetermined life laid out for her daughter. “I carry her energy with me,” Daoui says. “The instinct to trust intuition and walk away from what isn’t right.” Bureau.Art is, in many ways, an extension of that inherited resolve.

Daoui’s defining career moments reflect a commitment to rigour and relational care. Producing India Sachi’s debut solo exhibition in Paris, a project that unfolded with the cohesion of a team that believed deeply in the artist’s vision, was a milestone. That same sense of collective purpose shaped the production of Making Their Mark, where Daoui worked alongside 10 young women – many of them close friends – to welcome visitors each morning. “It was one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve had,” she reveals. “It showed me the kind of community I want to keep building.”

In that same spirit, Bureau.Art seeks out alternative modes of exhibition—more intimate, more intuitive. India Sachi’s show, staged in a hotel suite rather than a gallery, created an encounter that felt personal instead of formal, allowing viewers to understand the work through warmth rather than distance. “Experiencing art by both emerging and established artists should be more accessible, and we need more of these types of global art experiences and opportunities.”

Equally important to her is positioning MENA artists within global frameworks, rather than siloing them as regional exceptions. She is deliberate about weaving cultural and political context into her curatorial language—placing Assia Djebar’s Women of Algiers in Their Apartment within Sachi’s Paris exhibition, for example. “We need more artist residencies in the region, spaces where artists can thrive locally rather than feeling the need to leave,” she shares. “It’s my dream to open a residency in Algeria, welcoming artists, curators, and friends of Bureau.Art to experience the country through a cultural lens.”

For now, Daoui is preparing to launch the firm’s digital platform, offering artist studio visits, guest curations, glimpses into collectors’ homes, travel guides, and curatorial contributions. It is the next step in formalising what Bureau.Art already embodies: a practice built on the belief that art should feel as intimate as the people who make it.