Emily Jacir is a Palestinian artist and filmaker. She was born in Bethelem in 1970, but she spent her childhood in Saudi Arabia. She atended high school in Italy and she graduated with an art degree from the Memphis College of Art. She divides her time between Rome, Italy and Ramallah.

Jacir works in a variety of media including film, photography, installation, performance, video, writing and sound. She has exhibited extensively throughout the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East.

Since 1994, she started to hold solo exhibitions in different places: in the Beirut Art Center (2010), Guggenheim Museum, New York (2009), and the Kunstmuseum, St Gallen (2008). Jacir participated in the 51st (2005), 52nd (2007), and 53rd (2009) Venice Biennales, the 15th Sydney Biennial (2006), Sharjah Biennial 7 (2005) and the 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003). She received the Hugo Boss Prize (2008), the Prince Claus Award (2007) and a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale (2007). She is Professor and member of the Academic Board at the International Academy of Art Palestine (2006-11), and Resident Professor at Home Workspace Program, Beirut (2011-12). Emily Jacir is represented by Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London, and Alexander and Bonin Gallery, New York.

She has also worked with various organizations including the Qattan Foundation, al-Ma’mal Foundation and the Sakakini Cultural Center. She has been involved in creating numerous projects and events such as Birzeit’s Virtual Art Gallery. She also founded and curated the first International Video Festival in Ramallah in 2002. She curated a selection of shorts; Palestinian Revolution Cinema (1968 – 1982) which went on tour in 2007.

Between 2000 / 2002 she curated several Arab Film programs in NYC with Alwan for the Arts including the first Palestinian Film Festival in 2002. She works a full-time professor at the vanguard International Academy of Art Palestine since it opened its doors in 2006 and she also served on its Academic Board from 2006 through 2012. Jacir led the first year of the Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace Program in Beirut (2011-2012) and created the curriculum and programming after serving on the founding year of the Curricular Committee from 2010-2011.

Awards

• On 17 October 2007 she won the ‘Leone d’Oro a un artista under 40’ – (Golden Lion for artists under 40), – at the 52nd Venice Biennale for “a practice that takes as its subject exile in general and the Palestinian issue in particular. Without recourse to exoticism, the work on display in the central Pavilion at the Giardini establishes and expands a crossover between cinema, archival documentation, narrative and sound.”
• She was the recipient of the 2007 Prince Claus Award, an annual prize from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, Hague, which described Jacir as “an exceptionally talented artist whose works seriously engage the implications of conflict.”
• She is the winner of the 2008 Hugo Boss Prize by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation .The Jury noted that she won the award for her “rigorous conceptual practice—comprising photography, video, performance, and installation-based work—bears witness to a culture torn by war and displacement. As a member of the Palestinian diaspora, she comments on issues of mobility (or the lack thereof), border crises, and historical amnesia through projects that unearth individual narratives and collective experiences.”
• She is the Visual Arts winner of the 2011 Alpert Award in the Arts

Emily Jacirr´s work

Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Which Were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948.

Stazione, Rialto, 2009

For years, artist Emily Jacir has addressed the political and social plight of Palestine through an intense and intimate concentration on the everyday. Jacir’s ability to poeticize the quotidian as a way of telling the story of a people – her people – earned her the 2008 Hugo Boss Prize.

Emily Jacir´s major work

– Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948 (2001)

– Where We Come From (2001-2003)

-Crossing Surda (2003)

-Accumulations (2005)

– Material for a film (2005-ongoing)

-Retracing bus no. 23 on the historic Jerusalem-Hebron Road (2006)

-Stazione (2009)

Biennales

International biennales which have featured her work:

• 2013 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy
• DOCUMENTA (13)|2012 in Kassel, Germany
• 2011 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy
• 2011 Sharjah Biennial in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
• 2009 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy
• 2007 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy, where she was awarded the ‘Leone d’Oro a un artista under 40’
• 2006 Sydney Biennale in Sydney, Australia
• 2005 Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy
• 2005 Sharjah Biennial in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
• 2004 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States
• The 2004 Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, Korea.
• 2003 Istanbul Biennial in Istanbul, Turkey

Sources:

– http://edgeofarabia.com/artists/emily-jacir

-Beirut Art Center http://www.beirutartcenter.org/exhibitions.php?exhibid=86&statusid=3

– Alwan for the Arts

http://www.alwanforthearts.org/emily-jacir

Further reading:

– Exhibiting Politics: Palestinian-American Artist Emily Jacir Talks About her Work

http://electronicintifada.net/content/exhibiting-politics-palestinian-american-artist-emily-jacir-talks-about-her-work/5295

– Palestinian artist Emily Jacir awarded top prize

http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestinian-artist-emily-jacir-awarded-top-prize/7859

– Material for a Palestinian’s Life and Death

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/arts/design/13jaci.html?_r=0

Hassan Hourani (1974-2003) was a Palestinian painter born in Hebron. He studied Fine Art in Iraq (1993-97). He worked as art instructor at the Women’s Society College in Ramallah and Coordinator and Researcher at the Wasiti Art Centre in Jerusalem.

In 2001, he studied at the Art Student’s League of New York and continued to live in the city for several years. In New York he presented his one-man show “One Day, One Night” in the UN building.

In his work, the artist observed the world and explored himself in the world. He created installations that explored issues of memory, place and time. He drew, painted and worked with materials from his environment – soil, wood, ropes, sand, and plants.

His work has been exhibited in Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, South Korea, New York and Houston.

In 2003, he returned home for a visit. Like nearly all West Bank Palestinians, he had been barred from traveling across the Green Line to see the sea for many years; but during this trip home, he was able to visit the Mediterranean shore. On August 6, 2003 he went swimming with his young nephew Samer Abu Ajamieh and their friends from Ramallah, and both drowned near the Port of Jaffa.

At the time of his death, Hourani had completed only 10 of the 40 drawings that make up his whimsical children’s book, Hassan Everywhere, in which the character Rihan roams the world in search of the rose of love. That year, his drawings were exhibited at Al-Hoash’s grand opening in Jerusalem, and the next year Al-Qattan, a Palestinian cultural foundation, established the Hassan Hourani Young Artist of the Year Award. In 2004 the Qattan Foundation compiled his completed stories and half-rendered drawings, and published Hassan Everywhere.

The freedom of flight and travel of Hassan in ‘Hassan Everywhere’ carries particular resonance in the context of the confinement of Palestinians for whom such freedom is a dream.

Hassan everywhere-trailer

Hassan Hourani´s Work

Sources:

– http://www.resistanceart.com

– http://www.culturebase.net

Further reading:

– The exile’s return

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/apr/03/fiction.israelandthepalestinians

– Hasan Everywhere

http://www.daratalfunun.org/main/activit/curentl/hasan_hourani/1.htm

Iyad Ramadan Sabbah is a Palestinian sculptor born 1973 in Gaza who lives and works there. He studied at Fateh University in Lybia where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Sculpture. He holds an MA Fine Art Sculpture from Helwan University in Cairo.

Sabbah is a well know sculptor who became famous for his beach exhibition called “Worn Out”. His sculptures and the installations he uses are very artistic- many of his works have taken on an overt political tone.

In this case of “Worn Out” Palestine is all over his artwork, he uses his art to show the suffering of his people.

This exhibition is meant to show the horrors Palestinians faced in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza city, which saw some of the heaviest fighting in the summer’s 50-day conflict (2014). More than 2,200 people were killed, 11,200 civilians were injured and thousands of houses were razed by Israel.

Sabbah explained that this exhibition represents the psychological impact of war and commemorate those who died.

Shuja’iyya neighborhood is one of the places that was completely destroyed. The artist wanted with this work to focus on displacement of the Palestinians. He is completely sure that there has been a violation of humanity in all of the Gaza community as a result if the aggression.

All the sculptures were created using mud and waste materials found in bombsites.

The sculputures were also placed on the beach in Gaza to symbolize the refugees fleeing to other countries illegally in a desperate attempt to escape the conflict.

The familly of seven clay figures including a small child and a baby appear to moved through debris and rubble and past shelled homes.

Personal Exhibitions

Earth Gallery – Tripoli -1993

Fair point of view – Tripoli -1994

Folds Gallery – Arts and Crafts Village – Gaza

Gallery shades of red – the French Center in Gaza and moved to the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah 2009

Gallery outside the box – Qattan Center – Gaza 2010

Exhibitions and awards

Nasser University Gallery – Tripoli 1993

Planetarium Gallery – Tripoli – Libya – 1994

Red Crescent Gallery – Khan Younis -1990

Fine Artists Association Gallery – Rashad grilling – Gaza – 2001

Gallery of Fine Artists Association – Municipal Library Auditorium – Rafah

Vanguard Gallery Forty – fifth -2005 – Cairo – Egypt

The Alexandrian Alexandria Biennale XXIII – 2005 – Cairo – Egypt

Spring Fair – Ramallah -2003

Gallery artists from the Gaza Strip – Paris and surfed some French cities – 2007

Shield Association artists -2002

Art Lovers Society Award – 2005

Third prize in the competition did not Mobile ( White Night ) French Cultural Center -2007

Bank of Palestine Award – in Palestine 2009 Art Competition

Gallery 10 artists from Gaza – Paris – 2009

Gallery traces the war – Photography – French Center Strip – 2009

Dual exhibition durable – Deira Hotel – Gaza 2009

See gallery for faculty members at the University of Max – the French Center – Gaza 2009

Exhibition case – Rashad Shawa of Gaza 2010

Gallery 22 – Power Windows – 2010

Vss visual gallery – gallery convergence -2010 of

Gallery in Shi needed becomes – gallery -2010 Federation of

Palestinian Art Gallery – Dubai – Art only – 2010

Gallery Palestine in the eyes of young people – Bir Zeit – Nablus – Bethlehem – 2010

Auction yard – Jerusalem 2010

Collective exhibition Sharm El Sheikh 2011

Czech group exhibition 2012

A group exhibition of the Sultanate of Oman 2012

Collective exhibition – Czech Republic – 2012

Gallery fingerprints – Tunisia – 2013

Art gallery and workshop – Konia Turkey 2013 AD

Business Field

The launch of the Phoenix Monument – Palestine Square – Gaza

Monument dream of return – field Abu Hamid – , Khan Younis

Mermaid monument complex Italian – Gaza

Monument of redemption – the field of the 17 – Rafah

Festival honoring shield of Arab Artists 2009

Mental Health Shield 2010

Shield Strip Festival 2011

Shield Theater 2011

Key shield Gaza 2012

Medal of the Jerusalem International Prize 2012

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4R1qMnMkTE

“Worn Out”

Sources:

http://isabbah.com

http://middleeastrevised.com

http://www.independent.co.uk

 Further reading:

– Palestinian artist: sculptures spotlight Palestinian displacement

http://thecairopost.com/news/127508/news/palestinian-artist-sculptures-spotlight-palestinian-displacement

Samiha Al-Khalil (1923-1999) was born in Anabta in Tulkarem. Her father, Yousif Al-Qabaj, was the chairman of the municipality of Anabta for thirty-six years. Her mother is Halima Tukan. Samiha was a charity worker and a prominent figure in Palestinian politics.

She was enrolled in a private school in the city of Nablus when she was seven years old. She studied until the second grade of elementary school. In the early thirties, she joined a school in TulKarem and studied until seventh grade, and then she joined “The Friends” School in Ramallah and studied until second grade in high school. She continued her studies of the Arabic language until her third year in Beirut Arab University but could not finish her studies because she was banned from travelling by the Israeli occupation.

She earned her high school degree twenty-five years after she got married. In 1940, she married Salama Khalil.

In 1948 Samiha and her family became refugees. They lived in Gaza where she used to sell jewelry to survive until leaving by boat to Lebanon. IN 1952, all the family left Gaza by boat to Beirut and returned to the West Bank.

The experience of war and of being a refugee shaped her life as she struggled to gain back her country by shaking off the effects of Israeli occupation and oppression.

Samiha was an active women and she was considered one of the pioneers in social and women’s action in the West Bank.

In 1965, Khalil came to the public eye when she founded the al-Inaash al-Usra society in her garage – it would grow to become one of the largest and most effectivePalestinian welfare organization.

The organization empowers women through vocational skills trainings.  The center also offers residential child care and, through its sale of embroidery and crafts, helps preserve Palestinian heritage and culture during the years of occupation. From modest beginnings, Ina’ash El-Usra has grown to have a $6 million annual budget, giving Palestinians the opportunity to maintain their dignity and hope as they struggle to maintain their presence in their historic home.

In 1970, she became a member in the leadership of the “National Front in the West Bank”.

In 1978, she was chosen to be a member in the “The National Committee of Guidance,” the supreme leading bureau of the Palestinian people inside Palestine. She was the only woman in that committee.

She established, and later became president of, the “Society of Reviving the Family” for thirty consecutive years. This society was one of the most prominent national societies to stand up against the occupation of the West Bank after 5 June 1967.

During the 1980s, Khalil was tied to the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and detained six times by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) ; she saw two of her children deported from Israel and the other three (who had been out of the country at the time) forbidden from re-entering. She was eventually placed under town-arrest in al-Bireh.

In 1996 she ran for president of the Palestinian Authority, losing to Yasser Arafat, while garnering 11.5% of the vote.

A grandmother of 13, Khalil remained an active member in the political scene, serving on the Palestinian National Council up until her death in 1999.

She was a member of the Young Christian Women, of the administrative bureau of the Union of Charities in Jerusalem, the chairman of the Union of Volunteer Women Societies, which includes fifty-five societies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, member of the administrative committee of the branches of the Charities Union in Jerusalem, Al-Khalil, and Nablus, the treasurer of the Illiteracy and Senior Teaching Committee, of Al-Maqasid Charity, an honorary member of the Arab Lawyers Union

She wrote a poetry book entitled Uprising to Statehood.

Medals and Prizes:

• Medal of Jerusalem for culture and literature-1991
• Medal from the Public Union of the Students of Palestine-1992
• Medal from the Cultural Sports Center, Baka Al-Gharbiya
• Medal from the Arab American Society, Ramallah-1993
• Medal from the American Union, Ramallah-1993
• Medal from the Palestinian Society of Mathematical Sciences-1993
• Medal from the Palestinian Ministry of Culture-1995
• Medal of “For you, Jerusalem” Conference-1995
• Medal from Al-Bira municipality, Palestine-1995

Sources:

– www.jadaliyya.com

– www.passia.org

Further reading:

– When life hands you lemons

http://www.cipe.org/blog/2010/03/11/making-lemonade-from-lemons/#.VH2JFZUtDtQ

–Women Beyond Borders

http://www.arabfilm.com/item/384/

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:

– http://www.samaalshaibi.com

-The University of Arizona College of Fine Arts (http://art.arizona.edu/directory/bio?netid=alshaibi

– www.ayyamgallery.com

Larissa Sansour is a Palestinian artist who was born in Jerusalem. She studied Fine Art in Copenhagen, London, New York and is currently based in London.

Her work is interdisciplinary, immersed in the current political dialogue and utilizes video, photography, installation, the book form and the internet. She explores the complexities of life in Palestine by drawing on pop culture and film in a cunning and often-humorous subversion of Western narratives. Her work includes references to TV comedies, spaghetti Westerns, sci-fi and horror films—genres typically associated with light entertainment. In her work she combines political commentary with a playful exploration of alternative universes in multidisciplinary projects spanning photography, video and installation.

Larissa searches for innovative ways in order to revive contemporary Palestine, offering as part of her work a reflection on the tragic absurdity of day-to day life there.

Sansour’s work has featured in the biennials of Istanbul, Busan and Liverpool. She has exhibited at venues such as Tate Modern, London; Brooklyn Museum, NYC; Centre Pompidou, Paris; LOOP, Seoul; Queen Sofia Museum, Madrid; Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark; House of World Cultures, Berlin and MOCA, Hiroshima. Recent solo shows include Anne de Villepoix in Paris, Photographic Center in Copenhagen, Sabrina Amrani in Madrid, Kulturhuset in Stockholm and DEPO in Istanbul.

Larisaa Sansour was among eight finalists shortlisted for the photography prize for her Nation Estate project, the future Palestinian state is located in a hi-tech skyscraper large enough to house the entire Palestinian population. Each floor is named after a Palestinian city and is linked by an elevator. Conceived in the wake of the Palestinian request for nationhood at the United Nations in 2011, the work comments on the diminishing territory of the Palestinian state and how impossible it is to interconnect its cities. The piece was nominated for the 2011 Lacoste-sponsored Elysée Prize of Switzerland’s Musée de l’Elysée. However the nomination was later revoked at Lacoste’s request to disassociate itself from the political implications of the artist’s concept, a move that sparked a worldwide outcry. Shows in 2013 included her solo show at Lawrie Shabibi in Dubai, the MuCEM in Marseille, the Bluecoat in Liverpool, Harlem Studio Museum in New York, White Box in New York and the Turku Art Museum in Finland. Scheduled shows for 2014 include FACT in Liverpool, Reverse in Williamsburg, NYC, and Wolverhampton Art Gallery.

Larissa Sansour

Larissa Sansour´s artwork

Source:

http://www.larissasansour.com/index.html

http://www.barjeelartfoundation.org/artist/palestine/larissa-sansour/

Further reading:

– Artist Larissa Sansour Speaks Out About Her Ejection From the Lacoste Art Prize for Being “Too Pro-Palestinian”

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/754484/artist-larissa-sansour-speaks-out-about-her-ejection-from-the

– French clothing firm Lacoste censors, expels Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour from prestigious contest

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/french-clothing-firm-lacoste-censors-expels-palestinian-artist-larissa-sansour

Amer Shomali is a Palestinian artist born in Kuwait in 1981, and is currently based in Ramallah, Palestine. He holds a master´s degree in animation from the Arts University Bournemouth in the United Kingdom and a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Birzeit University, Palestine.

He is an activist working in animation, illustration and political cartoons. Shomali is practitioner using art, digital media and films.

He uses his art to interact with social and Palestinian context.

In 2005, he helped to establish ZAN studio, which brings together young artists and technicians to work on innovative projects in the field of new media and the visual arts.

Amer Shomali´s work

The Wanted 18

Selected Exhibitions:

-Abu Dhabi Film Festival, UAE, 2014.

-TIFF, Toronto Intirnational Film Festival, Toronto, 2014.

-MEASAF Middle East Alternate Sounds & Arts Festival, Athens, 2014.

-How Green Was My Valley, whitebox Art Center, NY, April 2014.

-The Modern Arts Museum of Algiers, The Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence (MoMRtA), Algeria/Kuwait, 2013.

-400 years of Palestinian art, Bank of Palestine Museum, Bethlehem, Palestine, April 2013.

-Qalandiya International, Gestures in Time, Al Mamal foundation, Jerusalem, Palestine, Nov 2012.

-Framed/Unframed, Al Najah University, Nablus, Palestine, Sep 2012.

-Beyond the Last Sky, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Australia, 2012.

-International Comic Salon, Erlangen, Germany, June 2012.

-Loop, The Palestinian Art Court, Jerusalem, Palestine, March 2012.

-Framed/Unframed, Birzeit University, Birzeit, Palestine, Sep 2011.

-Festival of Video Art & Performance, Gaza, Palestine, 2011.

-MEASAF Middle East Alternate Sounds & Arts Festival, Athens, 2010.

– Carthage Film Festival, Tunisia, 2010.

-Beirut Animated 2009, Lebanon, 2009.

-FIBDA Festival International de bande dessinée, Algeria, Oct 2009.

-MASARAT, les halles, Bruxelles, Belgium, Aug 2008.

-No Man’s Land, Gemek, Amsterdam, Netherland, Sept 2008.

-Lighting Lamps, The Guardian foundation, London, United Kingdom, July 2008.

-MASARAT, Wallonie Bruxelles A Paris, France, March 2008.

-Xray, Streets’ Billboard, Ramallah, Palestine, April 2007.

-MASARAT, MAISON FOLIE, Mons, Belgium, Dec 2007.

-The Second International Biennial of Posters in the Islamic World, Iran, 2007.

Sources:

http://alhoush.com/amer-shomali

http://saidfoundation.org/alumnus/amer-shomali

www.amershomali.info

Further reading

– New Palestine cinema comes to Malaysia, Canada and US

-http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/new-palestine-cinema-comes-malaysia-canada-and-us

Bissan Rafe is a Palestinian- American visual art originally from Beisan who works and lives in Houston, Texas.

Bissan’s artwork ranges from political cartoons, oil paintings, illustrations and literature. Her art connects the concept of world culture and folklore with a Palestinian theme. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries and biennials throughout the world including: USA, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Japan, UK and Palestine.

She established Nohra-Studio in Houston back in 2007. She is also known for her writings and illustrative novelettes in the literary fiction anthology.

She is the director of international relations and a member of the directive council at the International Artist Collective, Ali Ribelli, based in Italy. Her work ranges from oil paintings to illustrations and many things in between. One of her most notable oil series is Palestina I, a series of oil-on-wood paintings that outline the Palestinian folklore and dilemma using folkloric dresses.

Bissan never formally studied art except in two college-level courses in high school and, instead, is a biological science major from the University of Houston System pursuing a future career in naturopathic medicine.

Bissan Rafe´s artwork

Sources:

http://www.nohra-studio.com/projects

www.palestinechronicle.com

http://archive.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3715&ed=206

Further reading:

– Palestinian Folkloric Fairy Tales: Palestinian Painter, Bissan Rafe

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/old/view_article_details.php?id=19159

-Art of the Palestinian diáspora

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=382074

– Palestinian Folkloric Fairy Tales A Spotlight on Palestinian Painter Bissan Rafe

http://archive.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3715&ed=206

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 )

Peace and Love ( 4 pictures)

Sources:

-Ahlamshibli .com

– ArtStack ( https://theartstack.com/artist/ahlam-shibli/about )

-Art Discover ( http://www.artdiscover.com/en/artists/ahlam-shibli-id1739 )

–Further Reading:

–Walls, No Bridges: The Relation Between Revealing and Disguising in Ahlam Shibli’s Photographic Practice http://www.afterall.org/journal/issue.32/walls-no-bridges-the-relation-between-revealing-and-disguising-in-ahlam-shibli-s-photograp )

–http://www.ahlamshibli.com/Work/Work.htm

– Ahlam Shibli-Phantom Home (http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/ahlam-shibli-phantom-home/ ) 

–What lies beneath (http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/oct/07/photography )

This post was published in 2000.

Since the dawn of Islam, in the seventh century, Palestine has occupied a paramount place as a bastion of the third monolithic faith. Consequently, countless of Muslim mosques and monuments have disseminated in the country prior to 1948, when a Jewish state was established and the Zionist expelled 800,000 Palestinians from 80% of Palestine between 1948 and 1950.

But the new invaders of the land wanted to erase all tracks of Arabs and Muslims in preparation for the establishment of a pure Jewish state.

Accordingly, a frenzy campaign of rampage and destruction swept occupied Palestine, later Israel, targeting everything the Palestinians left behind them including their rich religious heritage. The Haganah and Z’vai Leumi gangs embarked on the destruction of 418 Arab villages including its centuries-old mosques and churches. A number of Muslim mosques and sites became overnight Jewish synagogues. Others were simply turned to restaurants, coffees, and boutiques and even to gambling centers.

The few lucky mosques remained partially intact were not allowed to call to prayers using megaphones. Muslim places of worship disappeared at large scale from historic Palestine and native Palestinians were compelled large sums of money to recover parts of their mosques or relics from Jewish landlords who took over it as spoils. For example, remaining native Palestinians were able to recover part of Dahmash mosque in the city of Lod only recently, to find its interior walls bearing, even after five decades, stains of blood as a result of a gross massacre against Palestinians– a stereotype of Zionist military campaign of terror on the 1940.

The mosque of Hasan Bey in Jafa was recovered by Palestinians belatedly, following a lengthy process of litigations in the court rooms, but the mosque’s religious authority were ordered not call for prayers through megaphones or by using the minaret.

The same story was with Seedna Ali’s Mosque, in Jafa District, dating back to the early years of Islam, was opened recently to visitors.

Jafa’s Grand Mosque, has been partially recovered by native Palestinians who perform their prayers in a bizarre situation since large part of the historic building was utilized as night clubs or coffees by Israelis who demand a huge sum of money to give up their illegally owned shops.

Mosques in historic Palestine have become under the Israeli state a witness to acts of vandalism and desecration practiced by a racist state and fanatic society of immigrants who harbor ill feeling to native Palestinians.

Religious sites are revered everywhere in the civilized world except in Israel, the state of fanaticism and fundamentalists.