Ranim AlHalaky (Syria/Lebanon) is a Syrian-Lebanese graphic designer and visual artist whose work explores typography as a vessel for memory, storytelling, and cultural identity. Working across print, spatial installation, and material experimentation, she translates intergenerational narratives—often rooted in migration, oral history, and place—into visual and tactile forms. For Ranim, language is not merely a means of communication but a spatial and emotional medium; letterforms become vessels for rupture, recollection, and resonance.
During her time at Delfina Foundation, Ranim will continue to develop her ongoing body of work exploring memory, longing, and cultural preservation. She will focus on typographic translation and archival layering—experimenting with how narratives of migration and return can be encoded through material, form, and surface. She will engage with UK-based archives, print studios, and the layered textures of London’s urban landscape to explore how diasporic stories can be reimagined in new geographies.
Ranim’s work and writing have been featured in Women in Graphic Design in the Arab World and Iran (Khatt Foundation), Scripts and Calligraphy: A Timeless Journey, and Nomadic Traces: Journeys of Arabian Scripts. Her projects have received international recognition, including awards for 50 Meters of Omaya’s Storytelling (Print Magazine Merit Award – NYC, 2015; AIAP Women in Design Award – Italy, 2017; Areen Award – Lebanon, 2015) and Conversations Through Time in AlUla (D&AD Wood Pencil – UK, 2023). AlHalaky’s work has been exhibited and commissioned internationally across institutions and platforms in London, Rome, Milan, Porto, Basel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
Alongside her artistic practice, she has led the art direction of large-scale cultural projects, including the UAE Pavilions at Expo 2020 Dubai, Floriade Expo 2022 (Amsterdam), and Expo 2023 Doha, as well as COP28 and UAE National Day initiatives (2019–2022).
Ranim was born in Damascus, Syria, and is currently based in Dubai, UAE.
With support from:
Delfina Foundation’s Network of Patrons for the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia
Artist’s website
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Please note all artist-in-residence biographies are accurate at the time of their residency. For up-to-date bios please visit the artist’s website.