visual artist & designer
My name is Safae and I am a Moroccan-Canadian artist, designer, and architect based in Montreal, QC.
In 2019, I launched my brand, Sfiya. In Morocco, Sfiya is a teasing yet tender nickname for all the Safaes in the country. Sfiya is Safae's popular alter ego; its amusing and endearing version. Today, Sfiya is an artistic approach that suggest a surreal, poetic and humorous vision of the world around us.
A little more...
I was born in 1992 in Montreal, Canada but I grew up in Morocco, in the Grand Casablanca region. Through the years, the metropolis became my city-muse, and the scenes that took place there inspired my first artworks.
My training in architecture gave me a more intellectual approach in my analysis of cities and helped me strengthen the intellectual depth of my artwork. In 2017, I decided to return to Montreal. I worked there first as an interior designer, then as an illustrator and painter.
In art, I am a pure self-taught, fascinated by oil painting and dry pastels. My approach is maximalist, inspired by the aesthetics of artists such as Andrew Salgado and Alice Herbst. I advocate fusion of styles, bright colors and sophisticated graphics. I also deeply admire artists such as Meriem Bennani who is experimenting with new techniques and taking part in the cultural decolonization of her community.
My current exhibition H’RIRA pays homage to the popular and contemporary Morocco and breaks free from the orientalist and colonialist representation of Morocco and it's art.
