Sama Raena Alshaibi is a Palestine/Iraq artist born in 1973. She was raised between the Middle East and United Stated of America. 
She studied photography at Columbia College in Chicago, and received her MFA at University of Colorado at Boulder, in 2005.
She is a conceptual artist (video art, media installation and photography), in which her themes are war, exile, power and the quest for survival.
She frequently uses her own body in her artwork, Alshaibi is rarely representing herself directly. The body situates itself in allegorical contexts, trapped in time and space. The body juxtaposed with symbol, backdrop and gesture, constructs contexts of her physicality. The body as evolving metaphor. The body as site. The absence of her body in her artwork is still the context of the body absent.
Her artwork doesn´t have simple figures but all these figures express a sense of fortitude- her work recalls the post-Nakba Palestinian art and visual culture in which she shows women as an icon of tenacity.
In paintings and illustrations by influential Palestinian artists Suleiman Mansour, Ismail Shammout, and Abdul Rahman al Muzayen, the female image is depicted as the embodiment of sumoud (1).
EXHIBITIONS
SOLO Exhibitions
(2015) Silsila, Ayyam Gallery, London, UK (Curator: Isabella Hughes) – March
2011 End of September, Selma Feriani Gallery, London, UK
2010 Zero Sum Game, Selma Feriani Gallery, London, UK
2010 Between Two Rivers, Al-Hoash Gallery, East Jerusalem
2010 FLIGHT, Lycoming College of Art Gallery, PA
2009 Between Two Rivers, Al-Kahf Gallery, Bethlehem, West Bank*
2009 SUMOUD (steadfastness), Hoffmaster Gallery at Lawrence University, Appleton, WI
2006 My Apartheid Vacation (The Project Room) Zero Station, Portland, Maine
2005 Women, War, and Peace; Feminist Interventions in a Time of Conflict, St. Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN
2004 Where Do the Birds Fly After the Last Sky? El Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española, Antigua, Guatemala
2004 Where Do the Birds Fly After the Last Sky? La Fabrica Arte Contemporaneo, Guatemala City, Guatemala
2003 Zaman: I Remember, La Fabrica Arte Contemporaneo, Guatemala City, Guatemala
Selected TWO PERSON Exhibitions
2014 Opposing Gestures, University of Southern Main Art Galleries. With Joseph Farbrook. Portland / Gorham, Maine
2014 Architecture of Memory, Mana Contemporary. With Dena Al-Adeeb. (Curator: Tyler Waywell)
2011 Of Mind and Memory, Worth Ryder Gallery, Berkeley, CA (Curator: Anuradha Vikram)
2010 JASAD/BODY: Sama Alshaibi and Ninar Esber, Mole Vanvitelliana, Adriatic Mediterranean Festival, Ancona, Italy
2009 Motherhood and Revolution: Sama Alshaibi and Beth Krensky, CalArts, Valencia, CA
2008 Enfoco Presents: Sama Alshaibi and Myra Greene, Umbrella Arts Gallery, New York City, NY
2007 We Make The Road By Walking, Mizel Museum. With Beth Krensky. Denver, CO, catalogue
2006 Sama Alshaibi and Rozalinda Borcila, The University of Stellenbosch Art Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa
2005 Unveiling: Sama Alshaibi and Joel Seah, The University of Southern Maine, Gorham, Maine
2005 Martyrs, Saints & Liars, Synapse Gallery. With Yana Payusova. Benton Harbor, MI
Sama Raena Alshaibi´s Work
Videos from the project The Pessimists invites a contemplation of the invisible forces that police behavior of people; the “pessimists” control one another by planting doubt, worry and fear, gestures that often engender stagnation.
Silsila — Arabic for ‘chain’ or ‘link’— is a multi-media project depicting Alshaibi’s five-year cyclic journey through the significant deserts and endangered water sources of the Middle East and North African región.
Reference
(1) ) Sumoud: meaning “steadfastness” or “steadfast perseverance” is an ideological theme and political strategy that first emerged among the Palestinian people through the experience of the dialectic of oppression and resistance in the wake of the War of 1967 .
Sources:
-The University of Arizona College of Fine Arts (http://art.arizona.edu/directory/bio?netid=alshaibi
