Hady Sy is a Lebanese-Senegalese artist born in Beirut in 1964. His practice spans photography, sculpture, and installation, engaging themes of identity, commodification, trauma, and shared humanity. He holds a BA in Communication Arts from Beirut University College (1984), an MA in Image et Média from the École Française des Attachés de Presse (1985), and a DESS in Political Science from the Université de la Sorbonne (1985). From 1988 to 1998 he founded and directed the International Festival of Fashion Photography across multiple cities, before establishing H Design Studio in New York.
Since the early 2000s, Sy has developed major projects including In God We Trust (Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York, 2004), Not For Sale (European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Berlin, 2009), and One Blood (2009-2013), a photographic journey across 79 countries that brought together over 500 participants around the symbolic act of blood donation. His Sifr series (2014-2017) interrogates currency and value systems, while post-2020 works such as 609 respond directly to the Beirut port explosion.
Recent solo exhibitions include It’s a Number’s Game (Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut, 2024); Sifr (Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut, 2017; Dar al Funoon, Kuwait, 2018); and One Blood (UNESCO Palace, Beirut, 2013). He has also participated in group exhibitions such as Hope in an Age of Dystopia (Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut, 2024) and Tribute to Beirut (Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris, 2021).
He is the author of In God We Trust (2006), Love Bible: Marégramme de l’amour (2018), and Love Bible: Words of Love (2019), and co-author of Yves Saint-Laurent: Forty Years of Creation (1998). Sy is a member of La Maison des Artistes (Paris) and the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) (New York).
Sy’s works have been acquired by public collections including the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris and the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut, alongside numerous private collections in Europe and the Middle East. His market presence extends to the secondary market, with works sold at Bonhams Paris and presented in international art fairs such as Art Dubai, Abu Dhabi Art, and Beirut Art Fair.
