Sophia Al Maria
Somerset House Studios resident

Sophia Al Maria

Qatari-American artist, writer, and filmmaker.

Somerset House Studios
New Wing

Though her work spans many disciplines including screenwriting, video art, collage and memoir -  these disparate practices are united by a preoccupation with the power of storytelling and myth. Her work has been shown in institutions around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Venice Biennale and Tank Shanghai. She has been screenwriting for film and TV in the UK for the past decade. In 2020 Sky Atlantic released her six episode adaptation of Anaís Nin’s Little Birds.

This experience led to her making Beast Type Song (2019) for Art Now at the Tate Britain. This film marked the first in a monumental trilogy about the power of writing and the medium of television in the construction of reality and was followed by Tender Point Ruin (2021) and Tiger Strike Red (2022). A second edition of her book Sad Sack (Bookworks) was published in 2023.

Her practice is fuelled by the combination of critical rigour with an affective charge in explorations of language, imperialism, and counter-histories – a deep investigation and dramatisation of the sociopolitical, economic, and environmental present.

During her residency she will be working on a new body of work in collaboration with Lydia Ourahmane.