Ahlam Shibli

Ahlam Shibli was born in Arab al Sbaih (Palestine) in 1970. Actually she lives in Haifa. She is a photographer and her work explores themes like the life of the Palestinian in villages unrecognized by the illegal state of Israel in the Negev and northern Galilee regions.

Her work deals with the loss of home and what it implies, but also with the restrictions and limitations that a home imposes on the inidividual.

Her work is associated to photojournalism and it involves an engagement with the subjects.

She is a very active person and since 1996 she has been working in the field of photography, realizing research projects that focused on the Palestinian living conditions under Israeli occupation.

First of all, there are the photographic series on the living conditions of the Palestinian people, within the borders of Israel, in the Palestinian occupied territories that are now partly self-administered territories, and in exile, be it in Jordan or elsewhere in the diaspora. Some of her earliest works address this situation, for example Voyage in Mt. Tabor (1998), Wadi Saleib in Nine Volumes (1999).

In the series Unrecognised (2000), which addresses Palestinian villages that are not recognised by the state of Israel and which therefore do not appear on the official Israeli maps. Shibli has returned over and over to these and similar locations.

In Goter (2002-03), the mostly black-and-white were taken in two types of areas where Bedouin families live: villages that they’ve inhabited for centuries but are unrecognized by the Israeli government, and “recognized” townships set up by the government. In the images we can see rocky terrains and flat landscapes sometimes with only one building. We can see children playing , families living in desolation.

In Trackers (2005), a series of photographs concerned with young Palestinian men who decide to enrol in the Israeli army. In the artist’s own words, the project investigates the price paid by a colonized minority to a majority of colonizers, so they can be accepted, change their identity, survive, or perhaps all of this and more.

In 2006 she participated in South Koreal with A Tale of Two Cities, in Brazil with How to Live Together, in Spain with The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society and in Australia with Home Ground.

Arab al-Sbaih (2007) and The Valley (2007—08), which can together be read as a discontinuous but cohesive narrative, or in more personal works tracking down vestiges of the past.

Trauma (2008–09) have confronted the ambiguous nature of colonialism and occupation and the relentless search for the meanings of home. Starting with commemorations of the atrocious massacre at Tulle that took place on 9 July 1944, Shibli reflects on the paradox of a population that resisted the German occupation, only to embark a few years later on a colonial war in Indochina and Algeria.

“Death” (2011-12), commissioned by the three museums co-hosting her retrospective (MACBA, the Jeu de Paume, Paris, and the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto), is her most ambitious and difficult work to date. It provides an in-depth study of commemorative images of Palestinian martyrs in the city of Nablus, a bastion of Palestinian resistance during the Second Intifada (2000-05). A martyr in these circumstances is any Palestinian killed due to the Israeli occupation, including soldiers who died in confrontations with Israeli forces, civilians killed in Israeli attacks and suicide bombers who carried out attacks in Israel.

Ahlam Shibli, artist talk at DCA

Ahlam Shibli´s Art Work

The Valley ( Arab al-Shibli, 2007-2008. Series of 32 photographs )