Hayfa Algwaiz (b. 1991, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) engages memory and absence through the delicate, lived contours of place, moving fluidly between drawing, painting, and spatial studies. Trained in architecture, she treats space not as a fixed or built form, but as an evolving framework for meaning—one that is perceived, remembered, and perpetually rewritten. Through acts of removal, redaction, and partial visibility, her work gives form to what is often unseen, allowing absence to operate as both subject and method.

Rather than constructing space, she renders portals—gravitating toward flatness, compression, and the capacity of two-dimensional representation to hold multiple narratives and lived complexities. Her work probes the threshold between interior and exterior worlds, examining how private and public spaces mirror, distort, and inform one another. Domestic scenes emerge from reflections on culture, religion, family dynamics, and inherited traditions, while exterior landscapes trace the imprint of progress and modernization on collective consciousness.

Employing techniques that range from 3D modeling and animation to painting and sculptural screens, she investigates time, spatial perception, and the shifting relationship between subject and object. Light and shadow, often mediated through screens, function as framing devices, shaping how space is revealed, obscured, and perceived. Extended time abroad sharpened her sensitivity to context—and to its disappearance—revealing how the displacement of a form—while remaining tied to its context—can blur meaning and heighten its emotional resonance. Repetition, ritual, and the quiet routines of everyday life recur throughout her work, functioning as subtle architectures through which identity is shaped.

Hayfa's work has been presented internationally, including a group exhibition at Ithra Museum (Dhahran, KSA); Art Basel Paris with Athr Gallery (2025); Dot Ateliers (Accra, Ghana); Hatch Gallery (Paris, FR); Thaer Select (Paris, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai); N.E.S.T Art Space (AlUla, KSA); Bait Shouaib (Jeddah, KSA); Al Riwaq Art Space (Manama, Bahrain); and Misk Art Institute (Riyadh, KSA), as well as exhibitions supported by the Saudi Ministry of Culture. She also participated in the Saudi Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.

Algwaiz has been selected for artist residencies at POUSH (Paris, FR), Bait Shouaib with Athr Foundation (Jeddah, KSA), Dot Ateliers (Accra, Ghana), and Fikar Institute (Failaka Island, Kuwait). Her work has been supported through awards and programs including the Misk Art Grant (2023) and the 8th edition of Young Saudi Artists (Athr Foundation).

In 2025, she published an essay titled Arriving at a Place You Never Left in Connections as Method: Relational Pedagogies and Participatory Spatial Practice, the second official catalogue of the National Pavilion of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the Venice Biennale Architettura, published by Kaph.