Nourhan Sandouk Translates Displacement and Identity Into Visual Art Across Damascus, Moscow, and Barcelona

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Nourhan Sandouk is a Syrian visual artist based in Barcelona, Spain. Her multidisciplinary practice spans illustration, graphic design, and video, blending creative thinking with a strong aesthetic vision shaped by a life lived across three countries.

Sandouk’s artistic journey began in Damascus, continued through Moscow, and found its current home in Spain. The movement between these places is not incidental — it is the work itself. Her practice explores emotion, identity, and displacement, translating the inner experience of migration into visual and written form.

In 2021, she published her first book, A Diary of Heart and Mind: From Damascus to the Other Land — a memoir told through poems, illustrations, and photography chronicling her life during the war in Damascus and her journey afterward. In 2024, she participated in the Barcelona Cultural Biennial as both an artist and speaker. Her work is available through her online shop on Society6.

Sandouk is currently based in Barcelona, where she continues to develop her illustration, design, and video practice.

Silver Lining commissioned this work from Nourhan Sandouk as part of the small.artists Global series, supported by GoDaddy & JPMorgan Chase & Co.