3. Cover Interview: Hayfa Al Gwaiz

Interview by Sophie Mayuko Arni

^{Published on February 20th, 2025}

Hayfa Al Gwaiz is an artist I met over a year ago in the JAX District of Riyadh. Her photo-realistic paintings of Saudi homes struck me for their touch of whimsical magic, and a comforting sense of familiarity. There is a certain fragility in Hayfa’s work, a study of the empty space, and the celebration for the mere presence of things, paired with the imagination of what could be. Her architectural background is evident from the precision of her drawings and her compositions – she manages to capture the strong duality between interior and exterior spaces so characteristic of this region. In both her paintings and installation works, she aims to record changes and preserve memories, especially within the confines of the home and the city. A soft yet strong commentary on ever-shifting urban landscape around her, constantly in construction.

On the eve of a large group exhibition in Riyadh, where she was premiering her painting Palace for Sale – gracing the cover of this E-Issue – we sat down and uncovered parts of her long journey from architect to 3D renderer to artist. Palace for Sale captures the essence construction, projected dreams, idealized futures, architectural plans. Plastic bottles and fences are intricately drawn in the corners of this massive plot, which soon will be inhabited by a palace-to-be. This is a painting of hope for tomorrow, anchored in the here and now.

1. Above: Hayfa Al Gwaiz, Palace for Sale, 2024. Acrylic, pencil, gesso on canvas. Courtesy of the artist. Below: installation view at Common Ground: Beneath the Gaze of the Palms, Riyadh, December 2024, exhibition organized by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture. Photo: Artur Weber.

Sophie Mayuko Arni: We are on the eve of your exhibition opening – your painting Palace for Sale is showing at the “Common Ground” group exhibition organized by the Ministry of Culture. I had the chance to see the early stage of the painting at your studio a few months ago. The technical detail is striking, and the title – so fitting. The luxury landscape in construction, the essence of Riyadh. Let’s start with this painting, how and why did it come about?

Hayfa Al Gwaiz: As an architect, I’ve always been drawn to construction sites—it's where drawings come alive, away from the computer.

This painting came from a moment when things finally clicked. I was driving to my friend’s house in a rapidly developing area of Riyadh, where construction fences are everywhere. Through a small opening in one, I caught a glimpse of a massive hole in the ground. I turned back to take a closer look. There were signs that read “Luxury Palace for Sale” and “Demolition Contractors.”

Behind a chain-link fence, the land was half-excavated, now abandoned, filled with rubble and trash. What struck me most was the suspense of this moment—the tension between present emptiness and future development. Why had construction halted before it even began?

This void felt more substantial than any building. Palace for Sale explores this idea of absence and presence, playing with positive and negative space in an urban landscape. It’s about how unfinished spaces hold meaning, anticipation, and uncertainty—mirroring the changing landscape of Riyadh.

I saw this beautiful piece of land and wanted to capture that feeling of negative space. This moment of potential is what interested me the most.

2. Palace for Sale detail views. Courtesy of the artist.

I sat there, took a lot of pictures, went back home and stitched them together to create a wider landscape. Palace for Sale is a painting where I wanted to play with the idea of erasing something. The idea of absence through presence.

There is a moment when the raw meets the ornate: when things are raw, the incompleteness is in the ornamentation. Technical architectural drawings, for example, are meant to tell a story that is not necessarily meant to be complete. Drawings tell a fleeting moment, tell a thought. The empty sky, taking up the upper part of the painting, is filled with drawings of the palace-to-be. I wanted to highlight that process of drawing architecture as building an idea, a concept, rather than building something physical.

There is a moment when the raw meets the ornate: when things are raw, the incompleteness is in the ornamentation.

S.A.: Riyadh is in full development nowadays. Diriyah alone is undergoing massive residential construction, alongside the historical preservation under the Diriyah Gate Authority. What do you feel about this transformation of the city, as a Riyadh native?

H.G.: I lived in California for 13 years before recently moving back to Saudi to pursue art full-time. Returning, I saw Riyadh differently—with the eyes of both an insider and an outsider. Every small change felt magnified against my memories.

Growing up, nature was scarce. The closest we had were scattered rock formations in forgotten corners of the city. These boulders shielded us from the streets, where families would gather for picnics. They created these quiet, natural facades in the urban landscape.

One day, driving home, I noticed the boulders shrinking. I commented on their beauty, and my sister asked if I was serious. “They’re taking up prime real estate,” she said. That comment stayed with me. The shift from natural to man-made is something I think about constantly. Why do I feel so attached to these formations? Why does their disappearance matter? I don’t have the answer, but I feel compelled to document them before they’re gone.

Change is inevitable—it’s part of the city’s natural cycle of growth. These landscapes are shifting, just like everything else. Through my work, I hope to capture these transitions, the things that might not be here tomorrow.

3. Hayfa Al Gwaiz, Surfaces (Dis)remembered, 2024. Installation. W 28 x H 68 x D 15 cm. Washi paper, resin, lightbox. Exhibited at AlRiwaq Art Space, Bahrain. Images courtesy of the artist.

S.A.: What are these rocks being used for? Is there any sustainable way to use them for new construction?

H.G.: I think they’re too brittle to be used structurally, but I know that sand from Saudi Arabia is used in glass manufacturing.

My work with these rock formations is about questioning how we can preserve them. Can we build around them? Can they exist as fragments, integrated into new construction? I imagine them repurposed as architectural finishes—tiles, furniture, or other elements that carry their history forward. It’s an idea I’d love to explore further, to find a way to make it tangible.

How can we keep remnants of the past? Can we build around them? Can they exist as slivers?

S.A.: We just witnessed the opening of the Riyadh Metro. Does the metro make sense to you, in a city like Riyadh?

H.G.: Absolutely. At first, I think it’ll attract joyriders and the curious bunch—people exploring different stations just for the experience. But over time, I see myself and my peers using it for work, and students taking it to school. It’s going to shift how we experience the city and interact with one another.

We have an introverted culture that becomes very extroverted within domestic spaces. Being in a shared, moving public sphere will be an adjustment for many. People from all walks of life will cross paths in a way that hasn’t happened before—and I find that really exciting.

4. Hayfa Al Gwaiz, المدخل | Entrance, 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 65 x 90cm. Courtesy of the artist.

S.A.: This brings me to this idea of domestic space, very much prevalent in your paintings. Could you tell me more about it? Many of your paintings are glimpses into the Saudi home, from a women’s perspective, a vision we don’t often get to see as foreigners into this art scene.

H.G.: As you know, the Gulf is a very private region, and much of that stems from our Islamic culture.

I’m deeply interested in space—both exterior and interior. My practice is split between these two realms: the city, with its urban and natural landscapes, construction sites, and fences; and the domestic interior, which reflects culture, society, tradition, religion, and family. I’m particularly fascinated by how the outside world shapes the inside, and vice versa.

A lot of my work draws from the Saudi home—its spaces, objects, and, importantly, the representation of women within it. There’s a distinct energy to these homes: the wooden screens, the materiality, the colors, the layout, the ornamentation, the proportions, the circulation. Everything is intentional, deeply embedded in cultural values, and vastly different from the American homes I was accustomed to designing during my architecture practice.

A lot of my work draws from the Saudi home—its spaces, objects, and, importantly, the representation of women within it.

5. Hayfa Al Gwaiz, المدخل | Entrance, 2023. Detail views. Acrylic on canvas, 65 x 90cm. Courtesy of the artist.

S.A.: You also did a series on the abaya. What does the abaya mean to you?

H.G.: The abaya, to me, is a form of representation—it gives me a sense of belonging. As a young girl, wearing it was a rite of passage. Now, it feels like a second skin, a safety shield. It allows me to choose whether I want to be seen or unseen.

There’s a duality to the abaya. It’s meant to cover, yet it reveals so much—your religiosity, your intentions when you leave the house, your social status. It holds layers of meaning beyond what’s immediately visible.

I want to reframe how the veil is perceived in Islamic culture. Historically, Western narratives have often cast it in a negative light, seeing it as a symbol of oppression. But in reality, it’s often an active choice—one that has evolved significantly over time.

6. Hayfa Al Gwaiz, What Lies Beneath Her Folds, 2023. Acrylic on canvas and pencil on vellum paper. 30x40 cm each. Exhibited at Misk Art Grant: Tracing the Absent. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Courtesy of the artist.

The abaya is such an interesting garment – it's something that’s meant to hide you but it reveals intimate stories about who you are.

7. Hayfa Al Gwaiz, The Living Room, 2022. Acrylic on canvas. 40 x 30 in. Courtesy of the artist.

S.A.: You ended up studying in the States. I know it’s a common trajectory for a lot of Saudis with creative ambitions, but looking back, what made you want to move there?

H.G.: At the time, I wanted to step outside my comfort zone and grow as an individual. I received a government scholarship that allowed me to study architecture in San Francisco, a field that balanced creativity with stability.

At California College of the Arts, I was pushed to think and create rather than memorize and regurgitate. Its liberal arts approach exposed me to fashion, graphic design, painting, and film history—all of which later shaped how I approached architecture and space.

After graduating, I joined The Open Workshop, an architecture collective led by my professor Neeraj Bhatia, while also working full-time at Min Design in San Francisco. We worked on competitions and exhibitions, including the Seoul Biennial (2019) and the Venice Biennale (2021).

Through this, I realized I wasn’t drawn to traditional architecture but rather its representation—the storytelling behind space and form. My role centered on crafting a project’s visual identity, something I continue today through visualization for artists and exhibition design.

7. Books at the artist studio at her residency at Bait Shouaib, ATHR Foundation, Al-Balad, Jeddah, 2025.

S.A.: That idea of drawing and rendering is visible throughout your work. The open sky to Palace for Sale is filled with architectural drawings.

H.G.: Yes, I’ve always loved layering linework over my renders. My digital drawings were incredibly labor-intensive—I’d export a blank render from a 3D program and paint the materials and atmosphere in Photoshop. I always dreamed of ditching digital tools and painting everything by hand, but there was never enough time.

Over the years, the pencil work made its way into my art practice. It comes from drafting architectural sets in AutoCAD, based on the construction line—a framework that still guides my ideas.

I love mixing the fragility of line work with the boldness of acrylic painting. This is where my architectural and artistic sides meet—the mass and the void, the skeleton and the flesh, the structure and the finish.

8. Detail views, paintings by Hayfa Al Gwaiz. Courtesy of the artist.

I love mixing the fragility of line work with the boldness of acrylic painting.

S.A.: Photography is central to your work I feel. You have photographic compositions in many of your paintings and drawings.

H.G.: Most of my work starts with photographs—capturing moments that happen naturally in my day-to-day life. It’s about my context, what I experience, what inspires me, and what makes me think.

I see my paintings as an exercise in framing moments through architecture. They’re not staged scenes but framed ones, shaped by perspective and structure. And as the world around me evolves, so do the scenes and subjects I’m drawn to.

For a previous painting, I looked at the connection between a piece of meat and a woman’s body. I took a photo in a Chinese restaurant in Oakland, where there was a piece of meat hanging in a restaurant that looked like a woman’s bust. I accentuated the female figure in that piece of meat, to tell that specific story.

9. Hayfa Al Gwaiz, A Piece of Meat or a Woman’s Body, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.

For the abaya series, I would take pictures of abayas thrown around the house. Every time you go to a formal gathering, you can see how a woman would tie or loosely leave her abaya on her chair. I then went on Photoshop and erased the background for these, and redrew them in different ways.

10. Hayfa Al Gwaiz, What Lies Beneath Her Folds, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

In a way, a lot of my compositions are inspired by Renaissance painting. I’ve always felt like we never had enough representation of spaces in our region. When I look at French or Italian Renaissance paintings, and see Western scenes, I wonder what this style would create when transposed to our region. I really like to work in that style, to have a counterpart that is Middle Eastern, Khaleeji, photo-realistic and contemporary. Being from here, I know there is a lot of grandiosity in interior spaces that is neither captured nor shown.

I’ve always felt like we never had enough representation of spaces in our region.

S.A.: Speaking of contemporary artists, who are you influenced by?

Mohammed Sami, I love the presence through absence in his paintings. Lamya Gargash, for her sharp eyes on interior spaces of the region.

It’s important to note architectural rendering styles that influence my practice. Specifically, the work of Dogma and the architectural paintings of Aldo Rossi.

S.M.A: Would you say painting is your main focus?

H.G.: For me, it’s less about the medium and more about the concept. I’m really inspired by Christo and Jeanne-Claude—not just their installations but the way they painted their proposals. My main focus is the 2D representation of a 3D object, space, or experience.

I’m fascinated by how different visualization methods shape perception. An image can sell a project, but when manipulated, it can evoke something beyond representation.

8. The artist at her residency at Bait Shouaib, ATHR Foundation, Al-Balad, Jeddah, 2025.

S.A.: Let’s end with your experience at Bait Shouaib in Jeddah, we’re sitting in Riyadh now but you are doing a residency with ATHR Foundation in Jeddah.

H.G.: I’m very grateful to be part of the Athr Foundation’s residency. It’s a two-month program in a UNESCO heritage house in Jeddah historical district.

This cycle’s theme is ‘Moving Narratives’ coinciding with the Red Sea Film Festival. We have a filmmaker with us in residence, alongside two other artists and a curator.

For this residency, I’m focusing on the framed openings and how as you navigate around them your perspective changes, And how you experience the horizontal circulation on the street is translated into the house vertically around the minwar goint up the staircase peeking into the different bedrooms.

Central light wells are the cornerstone of Hijazi architecture. This minwar permitted light and air circulation inside the house. There are a lot of dilapidated buildings in Al Balad with framed openings. Decorative screens face one side of the house to the next, with decorative mashrabiya screens layered to create shadows. Windows are the physical manifestation of the past connecting and framing the present, it allowed me to travel through time.

I wanted to translate the horizontal circulation of alleyways into a vertical dimension, through the inner minwar of Bait Shouaib.

9. Hayfa Al Gwaiz, Al Balad Residences, installation conceptualized during her residency at Bait Shouaib, ATHR Foundation, Al-Balad, Jeddah, 2025.

S.A.: Back with fire-drill questions. Favorite airport?

H.G.: RUH, designed by HOK. I love the fountain, and how there’s always a stray bird flying inside.

S.A.: A song trapped in your mind:

H.G.: Ethiopian Jazz. Specifically - Ahmad Malek, Autopsie d'un complot

S.A.: Favorite magazine?

H.G.: Not a magazine person.

S.A.: Biggest role model?

H.G.: My dad.

S.A.: Your favorite word in Arabic:

H.G.: Whenever we leave the house, we say ‘Estawda’tek Allah’– I leave you in god's protection.

S.A.: Favorite graphic novel:

H.G.: The Cage by Martin Von James.

S.A.: Favorite abaya brand?

H.G.: Gul - it’s a Bahraini designer.

Hayfa Algwaiz (b.1991, Riyadh) is a painter and architect based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from California College of the Arts in San Francisco. While working as an architect in San Francisco, Algwaiz discovered that her passion lies not in the physical construction of space but in its two-dimensional representations. Her practice examines the duality of the interior and the exterior world we live in, how we perceive our surroundings and how opposites can reflect and influence one another. Her domestic scenes are rooted in introspection of culture, religion, family dynamics, and tradition whereas her exterior landscapes speak of progress, modernization and how it feeds into the collective identity.

About the writer:
Sophie Mayuko Arni is a Swiss-Japanese curator and editor based in the Arabian Gulf, working across site-specific exhibitions, public art, and digital publishing. She is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Global Art Daily, a platform overseeing the publication of biannual e-issues archiving the Gulf’s contemporary art scenes in a global context. In parallel to her editorial activities, her curatorial work aims to connect inter-Asian geographies with shared visions of architecture, traditions, consumer culture, and technology. She holds a B.A. in Art & Art History from NYU Abu Dhabi and an MPhil in Arts Studies and Curatorial Practices from the Graduate School of Global Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts.

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🎙️GAD Talk Series –– Season 1 2020

About ––

Interviews ––

Open Call ––

Newsletter ––

Chronological Archive ––

🔍 Legal

3. Cover Interview: Hayfa Al Gwaiz

I saw this beautiful piece of land and wanted to capture that feeling of negative space. This moment of potential is what interested me the most.

There is a moment when the raw meets the ornate: when things are raw, the incompleteness is in the ornamentation.

How can we keep remnants of the past? Can we build around them? Can they exist as slivers?

A lot of my work draws from the Saudi home—its spaces, objects, and, importantly, the representation of women within it.

The abaya is such an interesting garment – it's something that’s meant to hide you but it reveals intimate stories about who you are.

I love mixing the fragility of line work with the boldness of acrylic painting.

I’ve always felt like we never had enough representation of spaces in our region.

I wanted to translate the horizontal circulation of alleyways into a vertical dimension, through the inner minwar of Bait Shouaib.

︎︎︎Previous Next︎

E-Issue 09 –– RUH/JEDSpring 2025

E-Issue 08 –– SELSummer 2024

E-08++ Fall 2024

E-Issue 07 –– AUHWinter 2023-24

E-07++ Winter/Spring 2024

E-Issue 06 –– DXB/SHJSpring 2023

E-Issue 05 –– VCE Fall 2022

E-05++ Fall/Winter 2022-23

E-Issue 04 –– IST Spring 2022

E-04++ Spring/Summer 2022

E-Issue 03 ––TYO Fall 2021

E-03++ Fall/Winter 2021-22

E-Issue 02 –– NYC Spring 2021

E-02++ Spring/Summer 2021

E-Issue 01 –– AUH/DXB Summer 2020

E-01++ Fall/Winter 2020-21

🎙️GAD Talk Series –– Season 1 2020

About ––

Interviews ––

Open Call ––

Newsletter ––

Chronological Archive ––

🔍 Legal

3. Cover Interview: Hayfa Al Gwaiz

I saw this beautiful piece of land and wanted to capture that feeling of negative space. This moment of potential is what interested me the most.

There is a moment when the raw meets the ornate: when things are raw, the incompleteness is in the ornamentation.

How can we keep remnants of the past? Can we build around them? Can they exist as slivers?

A lot of my work draws from the Saudi home—its spaces, objects, and, importantly, the representation of women within it.

The abaya is such an interesting garment – it's something that’s meant to hide you but it reveals intimate stories about who you are.

I love mixing the fragility of line work with the boldness of acrylic painting.

I’ve always felt like we never had enough representation of spaces in our region.

I wanted to translate the horizontal circulation of alleyways into a vertical dimension, through the inner minwar of Bait Shouaib.

︎︎︎Previous Next︎

E-Issue 09 –– RUH/JED
Spring 2025

E-Issue 08 –– SEL
Summer 2024

E-08++
Fall 2024

E-Issue 07 –– AUH
Winter 2023-24

E-07++
Winter/Spring 2024

E-Issue 06 –– DXB/SHJ
Spring 2023

E-Issue 05 –– VCE
Fall 2022

E-05++
Fall/Winter 2022-23

E-Issue 04 –– IST
Spring 2022

E-04++
Spring/Summer 2022

E-Issue 03 ––TYO
Fall 2021

E-03++
Fall/Winter 2021-22

E-Issue 02 –– NYC
Spring 2021

E-02++
Spring/Summer 2021

E-Issue 01 –– AUH/DXB
Summer 2020

E-01++
Fall/Winter 2020-21