BIO

Salma Hassaan is an Egyptian-German interdisciplinary artist and designer based in Providence, Rhode Island. She creates interactive installation, sculpture, and textile works to explore the softening boundary between self, technology, and the natural world. She earned her BFA in Painting & Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently pursuing an MFA in Digital+Media at the Rhode Island School of Design.

She has exhibited at the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab at RISD (Providence, RI), the Sol Koffler Gallery (Providence, RI), the Qatar America Institute for Culture (Washington, DC), Labryinto Festival (Guanacaste, Costa Rica), Dawayer Festival II (Siwa Oasis, Egypt), Wanted Design (New York City), Top Drawer (London), and Photo Cairo 6 (Cairo, Egypt). Her work has been supported by the Maharam STEAM Fellowship and the IMPART Artist Grant, and recognized with the IF Design Award

STATEMENT

contact: salma.pdesign@gmail.com

My practice moves between the digital and the tactile. Working across installation, sculpture, and textile, I create interactive spaces that respond to people's presence and movement, inviting a slower, more attentive way of being with our surroundings and with one another. In Borrowed Breath, two participants breathe into separate microphones, and each breath becomes a real-time generative animation, making visible an action so intimate and fleeting that it usually goes unnoticed, and turning it into a form of shared presence.

Guided by moments when the mind grows quiet and we step away from analysis and language, I am interested in the boundary between the self and its surroundings, and the moments when this boundry softens, when time bends and stretches and we begin to see ourselves shaped by the same patterns as the earth. I am drawn to how we can attune ourselves to the living systems around us. In my work, I use technology to emphasize our humanness and our connection to the world, rather than to disconnect us from it. The work invites new ways of perceiving, feeling, and connecting with the world and with one another.

EXHIBITIONS

2026 BioPossibilities, Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab at RISD, Waterman Gallery, Providence, RI
2026 Vis-a-thon, Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab at RISD, Waterman Gallery, Providence, RI
2025 Digital + Media Graduate Biennial: In Media Res, Sol Koffler Gallery, Providence, RI
2023 IMPART Artists, Qatar America Institute for Culture, Washington, DC
2023 Labryinto Festival, Guanacaste, Costa Rica
2022 Dawayer Festival II, Taghaghien Island, Siwa Oasis, Egypt
2019 The Egyptian Pavillion, Wanted Design - NYC x Design, New York City, NY
2019 The Egyptian Pavillion, Top Drawer, London
2016 Shadows of the Imperceptible - Photo Cairo 6, Saad Zaghloul Cultural Center, Cairo, Egypt
2015 PAPR 2015 Exhibition, Virginia Commonwealth University, Doha, Qatar
2014 Line Up, Torrence Shipman Gallery, New York City, NY
2014 Alternative Realities, Katara Art Center, Doha, Qatar

AWARDS/GRANTS

2026 Collaborative Visualization Grant, RISD, Providence, RI
2026 Maharam STEAM Fellowship
2026 Vis-A-Thon Collaborator, RISD Nature Lab, Providence, RI
2025 RISD Graduate Fellowship, Providence, RI
2023 IMPART Artist Grant, Q
atar America Institute for Culture (QAIC), Wahington, DC,
2023 Labryinto Artist Grant, Guanacaste, Costa Rica
2020 IF DESIGN AWARDS - Professional Concept Award
2019 European Product Design Awards - Silver Design Award in Home Interior Products

PRESS/NEWS

2026 The Brown Daily Herald — From Los Angeles to the Nile, RISD’s Maharam Fellows used their art skills for good
2026 Loop Lab - RISD Nature Lab — Material Circularity: from RISD, for RISD.
2019 Ahram Online — Egyptian Crafts and Time-Honoured Arts Shine Ahead of “(re)New(re)Work” Show in New York
2019 Enterprise — Egyptian Pavilion Comes to British Design Event Top Drawer
2019 Flair Magazine— Egypt’s Most ‘WantedDesign’; Egyptian Pavilion in New York
2019 Egyptian Streets — 13 Contemporary Egyptian Designers Exhibit Works at WantedDesign Manhattan
2019 NYC x DESIGN Official Guide — Featured Artwork by Salma Hassaan, p. 88
2018 Film My Design— Featured Designer, Introductory Documentary, directed by Flink Studios
2017 Ahram Online — INTERVIEW: PhotoCairo6 Curators Talk (In)Visibility at This Year’s Far-Reaching Exhibition
2014 Gulf Times — Alternative Realities’ of Five Students