Cristal Sabbagh’s (she/her) interdisciplinary practice includes traditional portraiture, ceramics, and performance. Sabbagh’s performance practice, rooted in improvisation and Butoh, walks a line between the everyday, the divine, the personal, and the political. In embodying in her art transformational memories while simultaneously celebrating pop culture and the experimental, she challenges power structures and awakens viewers’ senses. Her fine arts practice looks outward to portraits of the world around, taking the forms of traditionally drawn portraits, nontraditional portraits on ceramic mugs, and relief platters. Sabbagh labors over each piece that act as homage, are a resistance to white-supremacy. Not only do these works infuse the user’s everyday hot drinking rituals, but their ceramic forms will stand the test of time, leaving traces of how we lived. She is the creator and curator of Freedom From and Freedom To events that are improvisational performance environments which interrogate movement and sound. In 2021 Cristal was awarded a 3Arts / Make a Wave Artist grant, and in 2023 she was awarded an Individual Artists Program grant from DCASE. In January of 2025 Cristal was included in New City’s Top 50 Players issue: People Who Really Perform in Chicago, in their Dance category.
Bio as of 2025
