Houda Terjuman | Artist

Houda Terjuman- Lost in time like tears in the stand, 2025

Houda Terjuman, born in Tangier, Morocco, to a Syrian father and a Swiss mother, uses her floating sculptures and paintings to tell the story of migration, exile, attachment to roots, and the search for identity. Her surrealist works take us on an extended journey through the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.
The contemporary world is marked by cultural hybridity, which often results in uprooting and displacement, leaving lasting effects on the individual. Houda observes the world around her and translates it with great tenderness through fragments of land, roots, abandoned objects, books, trees, or ruins. Despite the sensitivity of the subject and the pain it entails, Houda Terjuman’s work remains positive and generous—it captures moments of happiness, inner peace, cherished memories, green landscapes, and quiet joy.
For her, sculpture is a foundational function of space, becoming both a place to live and a medium for negotiating identity in confrontation with otherness. It is only natural that she chose three-dimensional sculpture to express an evolving journey—from uprooting, to seeking home, to resilience, and ultimately to rest. This process involves individuals, communities, and the world at large.
Trees and biological systems serve as metaphors for cultural conditions: when uprooted, they become multi-rooted through the transformation of their own practices—resisting and responding to external pressures to become, on the surface, roots spreading in multiple directions rather than attempting to anchor deep into the ground.
"The history of my practice is largely influenced by my status as a hybrid migrant, a condition associated with second-generation migrants. My father is Syrian, my mother Swiss and I was born in Morocco. I am therefore African. The transitory nature of my evolution as a person and as an artist has opened up fascinating avenues for me to play with representation in art. My father, as a first-generation migrant, used to tell us that we had no safety net and that integration in another country was necessary. However, I chose to reject the concept and practice of assimilation and, instead, cherished the status of hybridity, which, for me, offers a rich mix of origins, voices and belongings.
My sculptures and paintings are small, familiar objects that weave stars. These small objects carry hope and build bridges between cultures. An empty chair symbolizes what we have left behind and keeps us in touch with our roots. A lonely boat is a beacon of hope. A floating bridge invites us to connect and empathize with the unknown."