Sulafa Hijazi is a multimedia and visual artist and director. She was born in 1977 in Damascus, Syria, and right now she lives in Berlin, Germany. She studied dramatical arts at the Higher Institute of the dramatic arts in Syria and then she moved to Frankfurt, where she attended the Fine Art Academy “Städelschule”.
She began her career approaching the animation and multimedia art worlds as a writer and as a director, addressing her works to the younger public of kids and teenagers, explaining social and educational issues. Her artworks have been displayed over different television channels and online platforms and now are known and followed by the youngers of the Middle East countries. Speaking about tv channel, between 1999 and 2001, Hijazi was one of the main founders and Art Director of “Space Toon”, the first free kid’s satellite channel, where she created 2D and 3D contents. From 2005 she became the Creative Director of the project, promoting a new educational campaign and supervising the launch of the website platform. Her animated movies were presented in many cinema festivals and won prizes and awards. In 2009 her feature movie The Jasmine Birds received several Golden prizes for Best Animation at the festivals of Egypt (2010), Russia (2010), Iran (2010), Hollywood (2011) and India (2012).
In 2010 she created the “Bluedar”, a digital art and animation production company, which headquarters can now be found in Damascus, Beirut (Lebanon) and Berlin. Using multimedia products, games, apps, social medias and virtual reality, the director realizes educational subjects for the young generations and organizes workshops which may help children and young adults who ran away from the conflict areas. “The Memory Box” is one of these related workshops, where 40 children and young adults drew of their past, of their lost homeland’s memories. The drawings had been turned into a comic book, a documentary and an animation which won the Special Jury Award at the 7th Kazan International Film Festival for Muslim’s cinema, Russia, in 2011. Between 2012 and 2017 she was member of the CIFEJ, International Center of Films for Children and Young People.
In 2011 Sulafa Hijazi took part to the peaceful resistance’s movement of the Syrian revolution, denouncing the social injustice and political oppression. According to this, between 2011 and 2015 she created a series of digital and figurative artworks full of symbols and metaphors, titled “Ongoing”. Dealing with these delicate topics and due to the aggravation of the controls above the freedom of thought and expression, Hijazi decided to move to Frankfurt in 2013. Here she continued her studies in contemporary art, exploring and experimenting different techniques and styles of conceptual art and multimedia forms. Her artworks have been displayed in numerous European and International galleries and museums, among them the British Museum, the Barjeell Art Foundation in Sharjah and the IMS (International Media Support) in Copenhagen. They are available on some online platforms and published on magazines and books.
