Publications
Qalandiya International 2016
Biographies
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Bisan Abu Eisheh (b. 1985) studied for his BA at the International Academy of Art Palestine, and received his MA in fine art from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London, in 2014. He has taken part in several art events including the Bitter Rose project, Glasgow international, Glasgow, UK (2016), and Friday Late Night at the V&A Museum, London, UK (2014). He also programmed Hospitalfield's Summer School Fieldworks 2016, in Arbroath, Scotland under the title Not Every Tent is The Same. He currently lives between Glasgow and Jerusalem.
Salim Abu Jabal worked as a journalist and film critic before pursuing a career in TV and cinema. He has produced and directed several films, series and programmes. His first feature-length film, Roshmia, has been awarded prizes in seven international film festivals, including the Dubai Film Festival, the MedFilm Festival in Rome, and the Al Jazeera Documentary Film Festival in Qatar. He founded and has been programming the Ramallah Cinema Club since 2014.
Jehad Al Ameri (b. 1977) lives and works in Amman. Al Ameri is currently the head of the Visual Arts department in the faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Jordan. 'I have been working for a long time on the relationship between poetry – meaning the literal text – and the visual image, and how their different characteristics merge, in order to produce a pure visual text out of the atmosphere of the written text.'
Isshaq Al-Barbary (DAK) (b. Beit Jibrin refugee camp, 1988) is a writer and researcher. His work combines discourse, spatial intervention, education, collective learning and public meetings. He practices critical pedagogy and is the coordinator of Campus in Camps, an experimental educational programme in Dheisheh refugee camp Bethlehem (www.campusincamps.ps). More recent research interests and projects revolve around representations of refugee camps and refugees in West Bank camps.
Tarek Al-Ghoussein is an artist and professor of visual art at NYU/Abu Dhabi. His solo shows, including 'K Files', 'E Series' and 'A Retrospective': Works from 2003–2010 have been exhibited in prominent venues, and his works are part of permanent collections in the Guggenheim Museum (New York) and The Royal Museum of Photography (Copenhagen), among others. Al-Ghoussein's work explores the boundaries between landscape photography, self-portraiture and performance art.
Mohammed Al-Hawajri was born in the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza in 1976. His multimedia work encompassing painting, sculpture, photography, digital collage and performance has been widely exhibited in Palestine, and he has received invitations to participate in exhibitions, workshops and residencies in Britain, Italy, Jordan, France Switzerland, USA, Austria, Japan, Argentina, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt and Lebanon. He is a founding member of the Eltiqa artists' collective.
Diana Al-Hosary was born in Gaza in 1988. Her collage-based work has been included in many of the exhibitions that have taken place in Gaza, and beyond, in the exhibition Diary of our Lives Here in Gaza in Jordan, for example. In 2010 and 2011, Diana taught at Al-Aqsa University.
Ghiath Al Jebawi is a Syrian architect and urbanist based in Milan and Cologne. He has a Bachelor's degree in architecture from Damascus University, and a Masters in Architecture from the Politecnico di Milano. He has worked in architecture and as an assistant lecturer at the Department of Urban Planning and Environment in Damascus. After the outbreak of war in Syria he moved to Beirut and later to Venice where he has been working with language, art and architecture.
Ruqaia Al-Lulu was born in Gaza, where she currently lives and works. She graduated with a BA in painting from Al Najah University in Nablus in 1998, and in 2006 received her MA from Helwan University in Cairo, Egypt. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Palestine, and since 1999 she has taught in a public school and also worked in the Fine Arts department at Al Aqsa University and Al Quds Open University in Gaza.
Jawad Al Malhi lives and works in occupied East Jerusalem in Shu'fat refugee camp. He received his MA in Fine Art from Winchester School of Art in the UK. His work over the years has focused on exploring communities, and their relationship to their environments and their everyday practices of life through painting, video, installation, sculpture and photography.
Abed Al-Raouf Al-Ajuri was born in Jabaliya refugee camp, Gaza, in 1977. He has participated in many art activities and exhibitions, both in Palestine and abroad. His paintings are expressionist in style, but he also works in sculpture and had a solo exhibition of his sculpture at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah in 2003. He is a founder member of the Eltiqa group of artists, and is an administrative member of the Eltiqa gallery space.
Ali Al-Rozzi (b. Gaza, 1988) received his BA in Business Administration from the University of Palestine-Gaza. He has worked with several local and international organizations, mainly with children and young people. Recently, and after receiving advanced training in theatre and performance, he has been a participant and team coordinator of the 'Safferni' project, implemented by Riwaq within the activities of the 5th Riwaq Biennale and the 3rd Qalandiya International.
Aysar Al Saifi (DAK) is a political activist and a writer. He is a project activator at Campus in Camps, an educational programme in the West Bank refugee camps. Al-Saifi has published a number of novels including The Last Lesson, The Gallows of the Homeland, Fighter for the Sea, and The Dreamers, which all revolve around and discuss the different aspects of life in refugee camps.
Yazid Anani (b. Ramallah, 1975) is currently the Director of Public Programmes at the A.M. Qattan Foundation in Ramallah. He was a scholar at the Department of Architecture, Birzeit University from 1997–2016. Anani chaired the Academic Council of the International Art Academy Palestine from 2010–12. He has curated and co-curated several projects, including the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th editions of the Cities Exhibition.
Jumana Emil Abboud (b. 1971, Shefa-'Amr, Galilee) works with drawing, installation, video and performance, exploring personal and collective memory, loss, longing and belonging, Palestinian folklore, myths and oral histories. Abboud has participated in numerous exhibitions and venues, including the Venice, Sharjah and Istanbul Biennales; the Bahrain National Museum; the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; and most recently in a solo exhibition at BALTIC, Gateshead, UK. Based in Jerusalem, she teaches at the International Academy of Art Palestine.
Maiada Aboud is an artist and researcher who was born in Palestine. Aboud received her PhD degree from Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. Her solo and group exhibitions have been presented in both Palestine and England. Aboud's work deal with ways that social and religious structures interconnect and influence the individual. Using endurance art, her interest in social, political and religious issues draws on a unique and personal perspective.
Noor Abed (b. 1988, Jerusalem) received her BA from the International Academy of Arts Palestine, and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles. She has shown her work widely, in London, New York, Los Angeles, Norway, France, and in the Jerusalem Show V. From 2015–16 she was accepted onto the Whitney Museum's prestigious Independent Study Program in New York. Noor was joint winner of the 3rd prize in the 2014 Young Artist Award.
Mohamed Abusal (b. 1976, Gaza) is a multimedia artist based in Gaza. His Metro in Gaza (2012) project proposes seven metro lines connecting the different areas of the Gaza Strip. Shambar (2013) looks at Gazan's alternative and creative light solutions because of the continuous disconnection of electricity. Abusal has exhibited internationally, particularly in France where he has had several solo exhibitions, and in the US, UK, Australia and Dubai. He is a founding member of the Eltiqa artists' collective.
Azra Akšamija is an artist and architectural historian, and an associate professor in the Art, Culture and Technology Program at MIT. Akšamija holds masters degrees from the Technical University in Graz, Princeton University, and a PhD from MIT. Her artistic work provides a framework for researching, analyzing and intervening in contested socio-political realities. Her academic research focuses on the politics of cultural memory and preservation in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Her book Mosque Manifesto (Revolver, 2015) explores transcultural aesthetics and cultural mobility in the context of Islam in the West.
Kamal Aljafari's filmography includes Recollection (2015), Port of Memory (2009) and The Roof (2006). In 2009–10 he was the Benjamin White Whitney Fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute and Film Study Center. He has taught at the New School (New York, 2010) and at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin (2011–13), where he also served as head of the directing programme.
Rheim Alkadhi is a visual artist who operates under growing conditions of impermanence, maintaining a practice that is portable and formulated from the perspective of a gendered Arab body in perpetual migration. Her projects are concerned with borders, mobility, intimacy, temporary economies and dis/order. Past research has culminated in Communications from the Field of Contact (Each Hair Is a Tongue) at the 2015 Sharjah Biennial; and Picture City Body, an online work commissioned by the New Museum.
Usama Allati is a guitarist, and began to play at the age of ten, when she enrolled at the National Conservatory of Music in Bethlehem. She is a Marcel Khalifa Guitar Contest winner. Currently, she teaches music at the Bethlehem Academy of Music (BAM) and Dar Al-Kalima University College. Her musical experience extends on both the local and international level.
Sama Alshaibi is a Palestinian-Iraqi artist and professor of photography at the University of Arizona. Alshaibi has received two national teaching awards in photography, and was the recipient of a prestigious Fulbright Scholar Fellowship (2014–15). In 2015, a monograph on her work, Sama Alshaibi: Sand Rushes In was published by Aperture. Her work has been shown in 15 international solo exhibitions, and she has participated in prominent festivals and fairs.
Hani Alqam (b. 1977) lives and works in Amman. He works in places around Amman, both anonymous and well-known, taking them as the main subject of his artistic production.
Suad Amiry is a writer and an architect. She is the author of a number of architectural and non-fiction books. Her book Sharon and my Mother-In- Law was translated into twenty languages and won her Italy's prestigious literary award, Permio Viareggio (2003). Her most recent book, Golda Slept Here was awarded the 2014 Nonino Prize in Italy. Amiry is the founder of Riwaq in Ramallah, Palestine. In 2011, she presented 'My Work My Hobby' at TEDxRamallah.
Majd Ammouri (b. Jerusalem, 1990) is an installation artist. Always interested in making art, she graduated from Bezalel Academy with a BA in fine arts in 2014. She now works as an art instructor in schools and art galleries. Majd lives and works in Jerusalem.
Arab Puppet Theatre Foundation (APTF) was founded in 2008 with the mission to encourage puppetry practices throughout the Arab world, advance new developments in the field, and function as an established puppetry school and theatre. APTF is a platform to revive, advance, continually challenge and rethink puppetry in the Arab world.
Fatemah Araghi obtained her BA in Architecture from the University of Westminster in 2015 whilst being engaged in cultural and socio-political student-related activities alongside her studies. She was an executive assistant in Mercy Trust events and is currently the academic secretary for the Iranian Students Association of Britain. She has just completed her MA in Architecture from the University of Westminster in the history and theory research lab having fulfilled her keen interests in the field and enhanced her understandings of the theoretical perspectives that architecture entails.
Shukri Arraf is a researcher and lecturer, born in 1931 Ma'lea, in the Upper Galilee of Palestine. Awarded a doctorate in the history of the Middle East in 1985, and has more than 35 books that investigate the Arab cultural roots in Palestine, including: The Caravansaries in Palestine, Earth, human and effort, Palestinian Arab village – building and the land use, and Prophets and saints in the Holy land / Palestine…and so on.
Hamza As'ad received his MA from the Department of Sociology at Birzeit University. His interests are in the philosophy of social science. His MA thesis was titled 'From Canaan to Kanaaneh: Paradigmatic Shifts in Studies around Folklore'. He is a regular contributor to the Al Quds network online publication and Bab el Wad, and is a contributing researcher to the Sliman Halabi research circle.
Abdallah Awwad (b. Nablus, 1987) graduated from the International Academy of Art Palestine in 2012. A participant in the Jericho 10,000 Years artists' workshop and Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center's Open Studio Residency Programme, he was recently invited to be part of the 'The Soul of Arts Calls for the World' event at the Dar Al Funoon Foundation in Morocco. Abdallah is based in Ramallah where he works with animation and childrens' books.
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Mohamed Badarne is a photographer, trainer and activist. He teaches photography and leads workshops in cooperation with NGOs, community centres and independent groups. For his own photographic work he has received grants from renowned art foundations, and his projects have been exhibited in major venues, including Darat Al Funun in Amman, the International Labour Organization in Geneva and the UN Headquarters in New York. He lives in Haifa and Berlin.
Mo'awia Bajis (b. 1989) lives and works in Amman. Bajis's work looks into ordinary, daily scenarios and details, and questions the hidden contradictions within them through multidisciplinary practices of video, sound and images and by relying on interactions with people to reveal new sociopolitical scenarios.
Mirna Bamieh is an artist from Jerusalem. Her work attempts to understand and contemplate the ever-shifting politics, while equally questioning notions of land and the geographies of in-between temporality. Recent projects have looked at scenarios that take languages of the absurd and the ironical use of them as tools for political commentary. In addition, she is developing situational performances that create, through the act of storytelling, a space of reflection, refuge and reconciliation. She has participated in several artist residencies, including the Maroc Artist Meeting, Art Omi, Ashkal Alwan, Kathmandu Contemporary Art Center, Delfina Foundation and Global Arts Village.
Ghazi Barakat (b. 1965, Frankfurt) is a German-Palestinian sound artist and musician based in Berlin since 1986. He has been a musician in many groups in Germany, the US and France, also contributing to film soundtracks and art installations. He has been a curator and a journalist, publishing and co-curating shows in several countries. His experimental work draws inspiration from jazz, ancient rituals, science fiction and neo-brutalist architecture.
Ahmad Barclay is an architect and visual communicator. He has led award-winning infographics projects with Visualizing Impact, facilitated workshops in multiple cities, and worked on major architectural projects. Ahmad previously worked with DAAR, Bethlehem, investigating architectural models for Palestinian return. His academic research focused broadly on the role of architecture as a tool of 'spatial resistance'. He holds an MPhil in Environmental Design from the University of Cambridge.
Anika Barkan is a Danish performer, artistic developer, cultural entrepreneur at CoreAct and at AFUK. Anika studied and worked in Japan, New York and South Africa with a number of legendary artists, among them Min Tanaka, Anna Halprin, Ann Bogard and The Wooster Group. Anika's Moving Garden – Ramallah performance aims to establish a temporary respite where performative and sensory experience evoke memories that revolve around the concept of 'gardens'.
Asef Bayat is professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He previously taught at the American University in Cairo, and was director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), holding the Chair of Society and Culture of the Modern Middle East at Leiden University, the Netherlands. His research areas range from social movements and social change, to religion and society, Islam and the modern world, and urban space and politics.
Matthew Beaumont came to the University of Westminster after spending two years working in practice, firstly in a small award-winning practice in Derbyshire's Peak District and then for 14 months at Foster and Partners. Prior to this, he graduated from the University of Nottingham. For Matt, a thorough and focused analysis of social, environmental and cultural qualities of a site is key before they can be synthesised into a sensitive and strategically intelligent response. His design process is heavily centred around hand-sketching and physical model making as a means of design exploration.
Sarah Beddington is a British artist and filmmaker, currently based in London, whose work in film and video, and other ephemeral or fragile media, investigates the intersection between the social, the personal and the political, usually in relation to journeys and migration and with particular emphasis on a sense of place, time and landscape. She is currently working on a feature-length documentary film that uses the aerial perspective of birds migrating through the eastern Mediterranean to reflect on ideas around exile, return and home.
Richard Bell is an Australian artist and political activist. He is one of the founding members of Brisbane-based Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW. His works, that include painting, installation, performance and video, have been exhibited widely throughout Australia and internationally.
Timon Beyes is a professor of design, innovation and aesthetics at the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), and a visiting professor at the Centre for Digital Cultures, Leuphana University of Lüneburg (Germany). Recent publications include Social Media – New Masses (with I. Baxmann and C. Pias, 2016), The Routledge Companion to Reinventing Management Education (with M. Parker and C. Steyaert, 2016), and Performing the Digital (with M. Leeker and I. Schipper, 2016).
Dineo Seshee Bopape is a South African multimedia artist, born in Polokwane. She uses experimental video montages, sculptural installations, paintings and found objects to address problems with representation and storytelling. She lives and works in Johannesburg.
Vanni Bianconi (b. 1977, Switzerland) is currently based in London. His poems have been translated into various languages and published in book form, in magazines and anthologies. In 2016 he published his first English language prose book, London as a Second Language (Humboldt Books). He has been awarded the Schiller Prize, the Marazza Prize for translation, and was shortlisted for the European Poet of Freedom Prize 2016. He is also the founder and artistic director of the Babel literature festival.
Benji Boyadgian (b. 1983, Jerusalem) studied architecture at ENSAPLV School of Architecture in Paris, specializing in urban sociology in post-conflict areas. Boyadgian works on research-based projects that explore themes revolving around heritage, territory, architecture and landscape. He uses painting and drawing as the main tools in his practice while also incorporating other mediums. He lives and works in Jerusalem.
Khaldun Bshara is a conservation architect and anthropologist. Bshara is currently the Director of Riwaq where he has worked since 1994. He received his B.Sc. in Architectural Engineering from Birzeit University (1996) and his MA in Conservation of Historic Towns and Buildings from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (2000). On a Fulbright Scholarship, Bshara joined the University of California Irvine where he attained his MA in Anthropology in 2009 and a PhD in 2012.
Phoebe Burnett is a postgraduate architecture student. Working closely with Nasser Golzari and Yara Sharif, her recent work and research has focused on the subject of Absentee Law, Jerusalem and Qalandiya Refugee Camp. Her work puts special emphasis on casting and making through visualizing narratives of the everyday life of refugees, and specifically in Palestine. Phoebe is currently practicing at Rock Townsend architects.
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Geraldo Adriano Campos is the Curator and Director of the Arab Film Festival of Brazil. He is professor of sociology and international relations at ESPM University in São Paulo. A researcher and member of the Executive Council of the Edward Said Chair of Contemporary Studies at the Federal University of São Paulo, he is also the Music Curator of the Biblioteca Mário de Andrade.
Campus in Camps is an educational programme that activates critical learning and egalitarian environments in Palestinian refugee camps in order to overcome decades of social exclusion, political subjugation and apathy. For the past years this programme has provided Palestinian refugees with the infrastructure and intellectual space to transform theoretical discussions of 'space' and 'agency' into practical, community-driven interventions.
City Guerilla was originally created as a part of an institution, Goethe-Guerilla, and has since become a well-known platform for individuals to express their creativity and enthusiasm in dealing with inconsistencies and attempting to create a better environment for themselves and other citizens. Being a member of the 'Guerilla' group has become a strong connection point, a generator of creative ideas and a synonym for activism, teamwork, creativity and an open-minded approach.
Andreas Christodoulou is an architect and designer who specializes in digital art and fabrication. His work focuses on visualizing social concepts through the built environment as a means of creating an architectural vocabulary. His most prominent projects are community based and focus on the refugee crisis in both Gaza and Lampedusa. He is currently practicing as an architectural assistant at Piercy & Company, in north London.
Megan Cope is a multidisciplinary artist working with video, painting and site-specific installations. A Quandamooka woman from North Stradbroke Island, Queensland, Australia, her work explores the intricate relationship between environment, geography and identity to probe myths and methodologies around colonization.
Alice Creischer is one of the key figures of German political art movements in the 1990s. Her recent joint project with Andreas Siekmann, In the Stomach of the Predators (2014), explores today's predatory capitalism. Creischer lives and works in Berlin.
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Saad Dagher is a freelance agronomist, agro-ecologist, educator, and yoga and reiki trainer. Saad regularly travels around the world researching sustainable farming methods. He established the first eco-village in the West Bank on the lands of Farkha village. Saad is establishing the first Community Garden and Neighbourhood Compost Centre on the grounds of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center.
Mais Darwazah is a Palestinian, Syrian and Jordanian filmmaker who works out of the Arab region. She has completed several experimental films. Her first feature-length documentary My Love Awaits Me by the Sea premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and received several regional and international awards. She is currently working on her next feature film on the subject of violence.
Eleanor Davies is an artist and producer. She invites people to engage differently with their surroundings, creating gentle and surprising provocations that allow a shift in position. She has played violin to gorillas, set up cages and landscaped school playgrounds. She has got people out walking, writing books and making speeches, and has worked with excluded kids, the elderly, teenage parents, the council, schools and the police.
Chiara De Cesari is an anthropologist and a NGO assistant professor with a double appointment in European Studies and in Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She completed her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology on Palestinian heritage and memory politics at Stanford University in 2009. She is currently completing a book, Heritage and the Struggle for Palestine (forthcoming, Stanford University Press). She is also co-editor (with Ann Rigney) of Transnational Memories: Circulation, Articulation, Scales (de Gruyter, 2014).
Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency (DAAR): Co-directed by Alessandro Petti & Sandi Hilal, DAAR is a combination of an architectural studio and a residency programme, and aims to use spatial practice as a form of political intervention. DAAR's programme has brought together architects, artists, activists, urbanists, filmmakers and curators to work collectively on the subjects of politics and architecture. It was established with the aim of engaging with a complex set of architectural problems centred on one of the most difficult dilemmas of political practice: how to act both propositionally and critically in an environment in which the political forcefields are so dramatically skewed.
Jessika Devlieghere is a social worker who has lived in Palestine since 2005. Originally struck by the life of street children while living for a year in Ecuador, her work and life have become centred on the fight for justice worldwide through working for many NGOs. In 1998, a first work camp for Palestinian children in Lebanon introduced her to the Palestinian cause.
Dictaphone is a research and performance collective that creates live art events based on a multidisciplinary study of space. It is a collaborative project initiated by live artist Tania El Khoury and architect/urbanist Abir Saksouk. Together with artist and performer Petra Serhal, they have been creating site-specific performances informed by research. The aim of these projects is to question our relationship to the city, and redefine its public space.
Anthony Downey's research interests focus on global art practices and their relationship to politics; new media and global cultural production; collaborative and participative art practices; human rights; bio-politics and migration, and contemporary art practices across the Maghreb and the regions of the Middle East. Downey is the Editor-in-Chief of Ibraaz, sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of Third Text and is a Consulting Editor for the Open Arts Journal (Open University, England). He is a Directorial Advisor to the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, sits on the Advisory Board of Counterpoints Arts and Pivotal Arts Studio, and is a Trustee of Strange Cargo and the Maryam and Edward Eisler Foundation.
Övül O. Durmuşoğlu is a curator and writer based in Berlin and Istanbul, and is the director/curator of YAMA screen in Istanbul. In 2016, she was the curatorial and public programme advisor for Gulsun Karamustafa's Chronographia monograph at Hamburger Bahnhof. She co-leads Solar Fantastic, a research and publication project between Mexico and Turkey, and recently curated 'Future Queer', the 20th anniversary exhibition for Kaos GL association in Istanbul. She contributes to various print and online publications.
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Basel El Maqousi (b. Gaza, 1971) is a painter, photographer and video artist. In 2003, he was awarded the Charles Asprey Award for Palestinian artists and shortlisted for the A.M. Qattan Foundation's Young Artist of the Year Award. He has been an artist-in-residence in Bangalore, India (2006), at the I-Park Foundation in the USA (2015), and was nominated by UNESCO for a residency in Algeria in 2013.
Mahasen Nasser-Eldin (b. Jerusalem) is a filmmaker who explores in her films lines between documentary and fiction constructions. Her research interest is in oral and women's history, exploring the representation and writing of history through film. She holds two masters degrees, one in Arab Studies from Georgetown University in Washington DC, and a second in filmmaking from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Alex Eisenberg is a curator and artist based in London. He is currently working on 'Performing Jerusalem', a project in collaboration with Al-Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art exploring live art and performance in Palestine. He works at the Live Art Development Agency in London and on independent projects.
Irmgard Emmelhainz is an independent translator, writer and researcher based in Mexico City. Her work about film, the Palestine Question, culture and neoliberalism has been translated to multiple languages, and presented at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the March Meeting at Sharjah, the Walter Benjamin in Palestine Conference and the New School and Americas Society. She is member of the editorial board of Scapegoat Journal, and author of The Tyranny of Common Sense: Mexico's Neoliberal Conversion.
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Munir Fakher-Eldin received his PhD in history from New York University in 2008, and is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies and on the Contemporary Arab Studies Masters Programme at Birzeit University. He is also a researcher at the Institute for Palestine Studies. His research has focused on how elite and popular actors in Palestine interacted with late Ottoman and British Mandate discourses of reform.
Issa Freij is a Palestinian filmmaker, photographer and cinematographer.
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Asma Ghanem (b. 1991, Damascus) graduated from the International Academy of Arts Palestine and received her MA in audiovisual arts from ISDAT, Ecole des Beaux Arts de Toulouse, France. She has participated in exhibitions, residencies and workshops in Europe, the USA, the UAE, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. In 2014 she was awarded a production grant from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture to produce her first experimental music album.
Manal Ghaneim is a Palestinian storyteller who has performed both in Palestine and abroad. Her performances use popular stories extracted from Palestinian and international heritage. She has trained children and young people in storytelling and drama, and has produced storytelling performances and theatrical sketches with them. She has participated in Palestinian national and cultural events, and in festivals in Algeria, Jerusalem, Morocco and Jordan. She recently founded a storytelling group of young people with the Bisan organization in Ramallah.
Hamody Ghannam is an artist and photographer from Haifa. Ghannam studied photography, history of art and painting at Tiltan college before majoring in geographical photography in the Glitz school in 2012. In his work, he makes connections between his specialized lighting experience and practice and the diverse background of his visual stories.
Riham Ghazali, born in Syria, is a photographer and filmmaker based in Gaza. She received her bachelor degree in journalism and media from Al-Aqsa University. She has produced several short documentary films and has participated in international festivals and competitions.
Rabab Ghazoul is a visual artist who uses video, site, language, the performative and the conversational to create installations, events and encounters-whether a march, a choir, a gathering or a walk-in the public realm. Artworks often draw on existing 'texts' to reveal the nuance of private affiliation; our negotiation of the political.
Nasser Golzari is an architect and academic who has been practicing and teaching in the UK since 1990. The founder of Golzari-NG Architects, London, he works on sustainable community projects with a specific interest in issues of cultural identity and responsive environmental design, working extensively in Iran and Palestine in recent years. Nasser is a co-founder of the Palestinian Regeneration Team (PART), a design-led research group that aims to search for creative and responsive possibilities to heal the fragmented map of Palestine.
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Nassos Hadjipapas is an architect from Cyprus, currently practicing in London. He is a tutor assistant to Nasser Golzari and Yara Sharif in the University of Westminster's postgraduate design studio, DS22. He obtained his masters in Applied Design for Architecture at Oxford Brookes University in 2015 where he developed his thesis 'Virtual Agora'. Nassos's thesis was granted 'The Fielding Dodd' prize for outstanding work and has been nominated for an RIBA Silver Medal. He is a co-founder of the 'Arteries Foundation'.
Aiman Halabi is an artist from Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. He is an active member of a number of artistic associations and founded Majaz Art Gallery in Majdal Shams. He has participated in several international exhibitions including the Journalistic Photography Exhibition in Amsterdam.
Inas Halabi has a BA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem (2011), and an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London (2014). Joint recipient of the 3rd prize in the 2012 Young Artist of the Year Award, her work has been shown internationally, in Palestine, Jordan, Switzerland and the UK. She has been living between Switzerland and Palestine, and was recently awarded a Mophradat production grant.
Ayesha Hameed's work explores contemporary borders, migration, critical race theory, Walter Benjamin and visual cultures of the Black Atlantic. Her presentations and performance lectures have featured recently at London's ICA, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and Edinburgh College of Art. Forthcoming co-edited publications include Visual Cultures as Time Travel (with Henriette Gunkel, Sternberg, 2017) and Futures and Fictions (with Simon O'Sullivan and Henriette Gunkel, Repeater, 2017). She is joint programme leader of Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Ahmed Hamza (b. 1989) is an architect from Gaza. His obsession with art led him to work as a freelance creative interior and graphic designer for a living, and he also participates in visual art projects. Recently, Hamza has participated in 'At Home in Gaza and London', a project with Station House Opera, London. Currently he is working on his personal portrait photography project.
Samar Hazboun is an artist and photographer who lives and works in Palestine and Europe. Besides pursuing her degree in international relations in Prague, Hazboun works as the Middle East and North Africa photo editor for AFP. She was awarded by the Khalil Sakakini Center for her project Hush on gender-based violence in Palestine, and she has been the recipient of a Culture in Defiance grant from the Prince Claus Fund.
Ala Hmedy is a conceptual artist who was born in Damascus. In 2015, Hmedy won the first prize from The Arab Photographers Union. Her work has been exhibited in Syria, Belgium, UAE, France, England and Morocco, and she has been an artist-in-residence at Testrup Højskole, Aarhus, Denmark.
Gordon Hookey is an indigenous Australian artist who belongs to the Waanyi people. He is a member of the Brisbane-based Aboriginal arts group ProppaNOW. He is currently working on a major project called MURRILAND!, a visual history of Queensland from a Murri perspective.
Wafa Hourani (b. Hebron, 1979) studied experimental cinema in Tunisia, and works with film, photography, installation, performance, music and poetry. Recent exhibitions have been at White Box, New York, and at the Weatherspoon Museum, North Carolina (2014). His work is in the collections of the Archaeological Museum, Thessaloniki; the Saatchi Gallery, London; ADACH, Abu Dhabi; and the Nadour Collection. He lives and works in Ramallah.
Claire Humphreys is a graduate in architecture, currently working at Rock Townsend Architects, London. She has been working on a variety of fast-paced projects, including designing bespoke furniture for Lacoste showrooms in Paris and London, University of Westminster's Harrow Library, and an installation for a Speedo product launch in the summer of 2015. Combining art and architectural practice, Claire is interested in pursuing conceptual and creative design methodologies based on social mapping animation and making. Her recent work focuses on the subject of Absentee Law and the area of Kufur Aqab, Jerusalem.
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Raed Ibrahim (b. 1971) lives and works in Amman. Ibrahim's work aims to provoke the viewer, by making them think or laugh. This combination succeeds very acutely in shedding light and generating debate on taboo subjects.
Nuha Innab is a Palestinian-Jordanian architect. She obtained her Masters degree in Urbanism in Germany and Cairo. She has an interest in individual and collective movements, the influence of the socio-political forces on the cityscape and the citizen-state-city relation. Her interest in Amman is represented in urban photography and documentation, housing policies and their relation to the economy, in an ongoing project called Traces of Socialism.
Saba Innab (b.1980) is a Palestinian architect, urban researcher, and artist practising out of Amman and Beirut. Her work on the reconstruction of the Nahr el bared Palestinian refugee camp has influenced her constant rethinking of architecture, and her concern with dwelling-in-temporariness. 'Through painting, mapping, sculpture and design, I try to explore the suspended states between temporariness and permanence and the variable notions of dwelling, building and language in architecture.'
Ahed Izhiman is an artist who was born in Jerusalem. Ahed has worked as a photography consultant and freelance photographer for the last ten years. Since 2001, he has contributed to community organizations as a young artist, art lecturer and fine art professional trainer, and is one of the co-founders of Art Lab, the first office-sharing project for artists in Jerusalem. His works have been widely presented in national and international exhibitions.
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Muhammad Jabal, 36, is an artist, writer, poet, illustrator and DJ based in Haifa. He is a guest lecturer in photography at the Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem. His 2012 work Jaffa 2030 offered an alternative Visitor Center for Jaffa, to help imagine Jaffa's return to the Arab World after the return of the Palestinian refugees. He has collaborated with DAAR, and been part of the Palestinema Group for Independent Films in Palestine and The Jaffa Saraya Arabic Theatre.
Annemarie Jacir (b. 1974) is a filmmaker and poet. Her 2012 film When I Saw You won Best Asian Film at the Berlin International Film Festival, Best Arab Film in Abu Dhabi, and was Palestine's entry for the Oscars in 2013.
Rana Jarbou has been researching and documenting graffiti and street art in the Arab world since 2007. She received an MA in Social Documentation from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her ongoing project One Thousand and One Walls has so far covered 12 Arab countries. Her recent documentary Hajwalah has been screened in six film festivals. She has published essays in Arabic Graffiti and Walls of Freedom and is currently working on a book about graffiti in Saudi Arabia.
Khaled Jarrar (b. 1976, Jenin) graduated from the International Academy of Art Palestine in 2011. His work has been exhibited widely internationally in galleries, museums and film festivals. His documentary, Infiltrators, won several accolades at the 2012 Dubai International Film Festival. Recent solo exhibitions have been at Art Bartsch & Cie, Geneva (2015); Galerie Polaris, Paris (2012, 2014); and Gallery One, Ramallah (2014). Lives and works in Ramallah.
Monther Jawabreh is a Palestinian visual and performance artist based in Bethlehem. Jawabreh has presented his artwork in several cities, in solo and group exhibitions. In 2010, he developed and exhibited his collection One, and in 2012 showed his series of 12 paintings, As Once Was Known. Jawabreh has travelled the Euro-Mediterranean space with his artwork through a refined metamorphosis of techniques comprising drawing, painting, experimental performances and video, among others.
Lana Judeh is an architect and instructor at Birzeit University. She previously worked on Riwaq's rehabilitation projects of historic centres in Palestinian villages, and on producing a manual for the rehabilitation of the old city of Ramallah. She holds an MA in architecture, cultural Identity and globalisation from the University of Westminster, UK. She is a co-founder of Group28, a research collective looking at the built environment in Palestine.
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Rim Kalsoum graduated in architecture from the University of Westminster, and is currently working at Golzari-NG Architects and with the Palestine Regeneration Team (PART) in London. Rim is also a volunteer at the RIBA education and outreach programme. Her main interest in architectural design focuses on the topic of 'urbicide' and symbolic architecture, which she is currently exploring as part of the Open Gaza research project. Rim's recent pavilion design won joint first place at FABFEST, London, 2016, as part of the London Festival of Architecture.
Mohammad Karazon is a drummer who was born in Ramallah into a family of musicians. He began his musical studies at the Al-Kamandjati Center in Ramallah and went on to study at the Angers and Toulouse institutes in France where he specialized in classical and jazz drumming. After returning to Palestine in 2014, he has taught in various musical centers, such as Al-Kamandjati, the Yamaha Music School and the Edward Said Conservatory, and organized music and drumming workshops for children across the West Bank and in France. He has played with groups, orchestras, choirs and singers in Palestine and abroad.
Karrabing Film Collectiveis a group of Aboriginal Australian filmmakers. The group collectively scripts and improvises characters based upon their own lives as a way of narrating the current status and challenges of Aboriginal worlds. The films of Karrabing have been exhibited in film festivals, biennales, and in community art spaces.
Abdulrahman Katanani (b. 1983) grew up in Sabra refugee camp in Beirut. He is an artist whose work is noted for its intensity in portraying a vivid recollection of stories amassed throughout the years that initially depict the tragedy and hardships endured at the camp. Through his work, he delivers the camp's message of resistance and endurance using tools from the camp that resonate happiness, apathy, empathy, tears and joy.
Lara Khaldi is an independent curator, based in Jerusalem. She is a recent alumna of the de Appel curatorial programme, Amsterdam, and the European Graduate School, Switzerland. Khaldi has curated exhibitions and projects in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Cairo, Dubai, Oslo, Brussels and Amsterdam. She teaches at the International Academy of Art Palestine, and at Dar Al-Kalima University College of Arts and Culture in Bethlehem.
Yazan Khalili lives and works in and out of Palestine. He is an architect, visual artist, and a cultural activist. Khalili has woven together parallel stories over the years, forming both questions and paradoxes concerning scenery and the act of gazing, all of which are refracted through the prism of intimate politics and alienating poetics.
Sama Khan is a Pakistani architect living in London. She graduated with a BA in Architecture from the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan in 2013. After working in Lahore for two years, she was awarded the Dukes of Grafton Founders Scholarship for her MA in Architecture, Cultural Identity and Globalization at the University of Westminster, which she completed in September 2016. As an architect, her concern lies in issues of gender and space and the cultural constructions that exclude women from participating in public spaces.
Shahmeer Khan was born in France and raised in Germany and is currently working on several key projects within a London-based architectural office. He completed his BSc in Architectural Engineering in 2012 from the University of Westminster and after gaining work experience in the architectural and construction industry he went on to study in Oxford. He graduated in 2015 from the Oxford School of Architecture, where he received his RIBA Part 2 and M.Arch.
Yasser Khangar (Ma'mal) Forthcoming
Rula Khoury (b. 1982, Haifa) is a curator, art historian and critic. She received a MA degree in art history from Haifa University (2011). Khoury was the artistic director of the Khalil Sakakini Culture Center in 2014. She was the curator of 'Manam' and 'Mapping Procession' at the 2014 Qalandiya International. Currently Khoury lives in New York, where she is pursuing a Masters degree in Writing Art Criticism at the School of Visual Arts.
Sameer Khraishi is a founding member and General Manager of Amoro Agriculture Company, which established the first mushroom business in Palestine. Sameer holds a Masters Class Certificate in Mushroom and Compost Growing from Horst, Holland and from 2010–12 volunteered with the Andalusia Syndicate of Workers (SAT) in land reclamation, rehabilitation and eco-agriculture to develop a more mutually beneficial relationship between producers and consumers.
Aya Kirresh is a Palestinian Jerusalemite architect with a BSc in Architectural Engineering from Birzeit University (2013), and an MA from Kingston University, London (2014). Her work and research interests are in events in the public realm, amenities, space and interventions, using multimedia productions and publications. Aya has exhibited in London and Palestine, and was an artist-in-residence at Cittadellarte in Biella, Italy, in 2015. She teaches at the Palestine Polytechnic University.
Peter Kosminsky is an award-winning British writer, director and producer. He has directed films such as White Oleander and television dramas and series like Warriors, The Government Inspector, The Promise and Wolf Hall. His films have won a number of awards, including a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award.
Donna Kukama is an artist whose work navigates the spaces of performance, video, text and sound installations as laboratories for creative research in order to fictionalize reality. Kukama and lives and works in Johannesburg.
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Amr Maddah (b. Majdal Shams) plays the saxophone. He specializes in more than one type of music, including jazz and blues. Currently he is completing his music studies at the Music Academy in Jerusalem.
Randa Maddah was born in Majdal Shams in the occupied Syrian Golan. She completed courses in painting and sculpture at Adham Ismail Center and graduated from Damascus University's department of sculpture in 2005. Maddah is a founding member of Fateh Al Mudarris Center for Arts and Culture.
George Mahashe was born in Bolobedu at Ga-kgapane in South Africa. His photography works with culture or cultural constructs, and people in relation to their place in time. He has exhibited in a variety of group and solo exhibitions locally and internationally.
Alaa Mahdi is an architect from Gaza. She founded her own business Falstaka in 2011 to spread and brand a young and dynamic Palestinian lifestyle based on local calligraphy design, to produce clothing, pins, pillows and cups.
Jumana Manna is an artist living in Berlin and Jerusalem. Her films and sculptures explore how power is articulated through relationships, often focusing on the body and materiality in relation to narratives of nationalism and histories of place.
Samar Masqui is an urban specialist with over 9 years of experience in international development, including urban planning and development in conflict areas. In 2009 Samar began work with UNRWA as an architect/planner, where she was involved in supporting the 58 official Palestinian camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. Samar is also involved in documentary filmmaking and photography, and has exhibited her photography in the US. She has built spatial installations in refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. She is currently completing her PhD at the Bartlett School Of Architecture, University College London.
Aleen Masoud was born in Bethlehem, Palestine, and is a business graduate from Bethlehem University. She started playing the violin at the Edward Said National Conservatory at the age of ten and began singing four years ago. Aleen works as a violin teacher at Sounds of Palestine, teaching refugee children, and helping build hope and a better future for young Palestinian musicians.
Majd Masri (b. 1991, Jerusalem) graduated from Al Najah University in Nablus with a BA in painting and photography in 2013. She has participated in various workshops and group exhibitions, in Palestine, Norway and Denmark. Majd is a member of the administrative committee of the Young Artists Forum in Ramallah and the Palestinian Association of Artists.
Dina Mattar (b. Gaza, 1985) graduated with a BA in fine art and education from Al Aqsa University in Gaza in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in many exhibitions in Palestine and regionally, as well as in Europe, the USA, South America and the UAE. In 2012 she was an artist-in-residence at Cité International des Arts in Paris. She lives and works in Gaza, and is a member of the Eltiqa artists' collective.
Tshibumna Kanda Matulu (1947–1981) was a painter from Zaïre who was most famous for his series of 102 canvases, painted 1974/75, that tell the story of Congolese histories and revolutions and the colonial and decolonial periods. These paintings are collected in the book Remembering the Present by ethnographer Johannes Fabian.
Dina Mimi (b. Jerusalem, 1994) completed her BA at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, specializing in ceramics and glass, in 2016, and also studied fine arts in the Netherlands for a semester at the Artez academy in 2015. She will be studying for her MA at Ecole Cantonale d'Art du Valle (ECAV) in Sierre, Switzerland.
MinRASY PROJECTS has been developing and producing projects that stem from its director Rana Sadik. 'MinRASY' is both an acronym in Arabic, from the names Rana and Samer Younis, and a double entendre, meaning 'from my head'. Among its projects are: USPA at World Travel Expo, Kuwait, Tarek ala Duwar, Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence (MoMRtA), Study for a Domiciled Gallery and the publication We're all for Kuwait and Kuwait is for Us. MinRASY PROJECTS also participated in the 2012 Qalandiya International.
Muhammad Mughrabi (Ma'mal) Forthcoming
Rima Mismar completed her studies in Communication Arts at the Lebanese American University (LAU) after which she had a ten-year career as a film critic. In 2011, she joined the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) as the Film Programs Manager and oversees the general call for films and special film programmes. In early 2015, she was appointed Deputy Director of AFAC.
Nat Muller is an independent curator and critic based in Amsterdam. Her main interests include: the intersections of aesthetics, media and politics; media art and contemporary art in and from the Middle East. She is a regular contributor to Springerin, MetropolisM. Her writing has been published amongst others in Bidoun, ArtAsiaPacific, Art Papers, Hyperallergic, Canvas, X-tra, The Majalla, Art Margins and Harper's Bazaar Arabia. She has also written numerous catalogue and monographic essays on artists from the Middle East. With Alessandro Ludovico she edited the Mag.net Reader2: Between Paper and Pixel (2007), and Mag.net Reader3: Processual Publishing, Actual Gestures (2009), based on a series of debates organized at Documenta XII. She has taught at universities and academies in The Netherlands and the Middle East, and has curated video and film screenings for projects and festivals internationally, including for Rotterdam's International Film Festival, Norwegian Short Film Festival and Video D.U.M.B.O. She is a member of the Fund for Creative Industries and e-Culture's advisory committee (NL) as well as Amsterdam's municipal committee for artist studios. Previously she served as a member of selection committee of the Mondriaan Fund (NL).
In 2015 and 2016 Nat served as the Outreach Coordinator for the Prince Claus Fund. Recent projects include Spectral Imprints for the Abraaj Group Art Prize in Dubai (2012), Adel Abidin's solo exhibition I love to love… at Forum Box in Helsinki (2013), Memory Material at Akinci Gallery, Amsterdam (2014); Customs Made: Quotidian Practices & Everyday Rituals at Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah (2014); This is the Time. This is the Record of the Time at Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam & American University of Beirut Gallery (2014/15). Nat is editorial correspondent for Ibraaz and in 2012 was a speaker on BBC World's award-winning program The Doha Debates. In 2015 she curated a group show on contemporary Islamic miniatures Minor Heroisms for Galeri Zilberman (Istanbul) and Sadik Kwaish Alfraji's acclaimed solo show Driven by Storms (Ali's Boat) at Ayyam Gallery in Dubai for which she edited his first monograph, published by Schilt Publishing. In the same year she was Associate Curator for the Delfina Foundation's Politics of Food Program (London). In 2016 she edited Nancy Atakan's monograph Passing On published by Kehrer Verlag, and curated her solo show Sporting Chances at Pi Artworks (London). Her most recent show on the timely topic of loss of cultural heritage But Still Tomorrow Builds into My Face opened at Lawrie Shabibi Gallery during Art Dubai. www.natmuller.com
May Murad (b. Gaza, 1984) graduated with a BA in fine arts from Al Aqsa University, Gaza, in 2006. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine, in Jerusalem, Umm El Fahem, Nablus, Hebron and Ramallah, as well as in Sharjah and Dubai. She teaches art in Gaza, where she lives and works.
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Ahmad Nabil 'Fiction has been my passion since I was little; I grew up as a visual artist, especially in the fields of creating fantasy and fiction in painting, performing and writing. I usually work with children and young people in widening their imagination and artistic skills, passing on to them the tools they need to become pilots at what they love to do.'
Majdal Nateel (b. 1987) gained her BA in fine arts from Al-Aqsa University in Gaza. She has participated in various group exhibitions, and has had two solo exhibitions of her work in Gaza, 'Salt of Memory' (2012) and 'The Effect of Light and Glass' (2014). Majdal was also a finalist in the 2014 Young Artist Award. She has given workshops in drama, visual arts and animation, and been a teaching assistant in graphic design at the Gaza Community Training College.
Nene is an acrobat, juggler, dancer and actor from Colombia, now based in Tromsø, Norway, who works in between the borders of the circus, dance, visual arts and theatre. Nene received his Master's degree in Arts-Physical Theatre, and since then has been researching and questioning the performer-audience and audience-performer relations. Nene has performed in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, North and South America, and has led workshops in projects, schools and universities around the world.
Tom Nicholson works with archival material and the visual languages of politics. Nicholson engages aspects of Australia's colonial histories and realities through combinations of drawings, monumental forms, and printed material, often linking these to the realities of other places and struggles. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Malene Nors Tardrup (b. 1974) studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Glasgow School of Art, and the University of New Mexico. Interested in why, where and how as humans we navigate and manifest ourselves, as an artist, theorist and facilitator, her work focuses on issues of cultural identity, cultural history and historiography. Her work is based on the photographic medium but often uses different media and methods. Lives and works in Copenhagen.
Nothing Gets Organized (NGO) exists as a forlorn and contemplative_____, a ____ and _____ twirl in a moment of bewilderment. The platform is interested in un/conventional processes of self-organising, those that do not imply structure, tangibility, context or form. The founding members are Dineo Seshee Bopape, Gabi Ngcobo and Sinethemba Twalo.
Christian Nyampeta is a Rwandan-Dutch artist. His practice focuses on the idea of 'how to live together'. He builds habitable structures, which encourage audiences to dwell within a space of art. He lives and works in London.
Rachel O'Reilly is a poet and artist, independent researcher and theory advisor at the Dutch Art Institute. She developed The Gas Imaginary in residence at the Jan van Eyck Academie. Curatorial collaborations include The Leisure Class GoMA, Contour 8 (public programs), and the online platform of Cosmopolis, Centre Pompidou 2017.
Ea Ørum (b. 1981) is a sound artist and writer. 'I have a passion for stories… I've lived at a nursing home home for a week as an 88-year old, and made soundscapes so people could feel old age for themselves. Whether doing a longer sound feature on culture in either Los Angeles or in the Middle East, I use ethnographic methods. I want people to feel, see and listen… I want to open windows, I want the audience to perceive the world differently after encountering my work.'
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Adhitya Pandu is from Indonesia and completed his bachelor degree at the University of Indonesia. Soon after, he collaborated with his tutors and became a research assistant until early 2013. He continued his studies at The Oxford School of Architecture to obtain his M. Arch (RIBA Part 2) and graduated in 2015. He currently lives and works in London.
Fernando Jose Pereira studied at the School of Fine Arts of Oporto and was awarded his PhD in Fine Arts from Vigo University in Spain. He teaches at the University of Porto, and is a researcher at the Institute of Research in Art, Design and Society. His main subjects are art and politics, and art and nature (as a form of politics). He lives and works in Oporto, Portugal.
Anna Popielarska is a recent M.Arch graduate from the University of Westminster. She completed her BA in Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, followed by two years in the industry, at Kengo Kuma Associates in Tokyo and Knight Architects, working on award-winning projects in both practices. Aside from her studies, she is a also member of the England team of the European Assembly of Architecture Students, where she has participated in architectural workshops.
Elizabeth A. Povinelli is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. Povinelli's work focuses on developing a critical theory of late liberalism that would support an anthropology of the otherwise. She is one of the founding members of the Karrabing Film Collective.
Ryan Presley currently lives and works in Brisbane, Australia. His art practice is a reflection of his locale which he audits and critiques to mount a larger enquiry that interrogates the articulations of power. He recently completed a PhD at the Queensland College of Art.
Judy Price is a lens-based artist working across photography, moving image, sound and installation. Her practice engages with the boundaries between documentary, the cinematic, fiction and testimony and often involves extensive field research where she explores sites that are interwoven and striated by a multiple histories, economies and forces. She often employs multiple strategies drawing on images and sounds from archival sources as well as from a sustained study of a place that is resonant with overwritten histories and redrawn boundaries.
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Sahar Qawasmi is an architect and cultural heritage practitioner. She is co-founder of Sakiya, a nomadic platform for art, science and agriculture. Sahar is co-curator of 'Sites of Return',the Ramallah Municipality Programme for QI 2016.
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Radio Dona Taraddod (Without Hesitation/Frequency) is a volunteer-based online radio programme, and, quoting Naji al-Ali, is biased towards those who are down under. It has been broadcasting for over two years, and seeks to critique and rebut the prevailing socio-political, economic and media rhetoric, employing drama and black comedy (as needed). Radio Dona Taraddod is broadcast by www.itijah.ps, and Multaqa Nabd al-Shababi Pulse Youth Forum.
Samer Rashed chose to study the viola not only because of its unique sound, but also because it was among the more uncommon instruments to study in Palestine. He graduated from the National Conservatory of Music in Jerusalem in 2012, and also studied in Turkey with Nedim Nalbantoglu, a specialist in gypsy, Turkish and jazz music. Samer has participated in concerts and festivals in Sweden, Greece, Bahrain, Finland, Belgium, Serbia, Lebanon, Spain, Norway, Jordan, Syria, Kuwait and the UAE.
Alia Rayyan has an MA degree in international politics, with a focus on the Middle East, sociology and history of art, from the University of Hamburg and the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Since 2001 she has interwoven politics and art as a creative producer, filmmaker, project manager, journalist and writer in Berlin, Beirut, Dubai, Amman and Ramallah. Moving in 2007 to Palestine brought her focus to the language of image and identity, and she worked for different international organizations in Ramallah and Amman as a consultant and culture manager. Since September 2013, she has been Director of the Al Hoash Gallery in Jerusalem.
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Shada Safadi is a visual artist born in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights. Safadi won the 3rd prize in the A.M. Qattan Foundation's Young Artist of the Year Award for her series of paintings, In the Presence of the Crow in 2008. She is a founder member of Fateh Al Mudarris Center of Arts and Culture.
Angeliki Sakellariou is a Greek architect and dance performer based in London. In 2016 she participated in running workshops on the MA Architecture course at the University of Westminster (on the Architecture Cultural identity & Globalization pathway). Angeliki is interested in site-specific performance arts and the relationship between the moving body and the physical space that surrounds it.
Sakiya is an international Art/Science/Agriculture residency programme with a mandate to bring international and local practitioners together for academic, artistic and ecological interventions with an emphasis on fostering and developing sustainable practices across disciplines.
Ruba Salameh (b. 1985, Nazareth) completed a BFA and MFA at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (2013 and 2014). She has participated in artist-in-residence programmes, including in Aarau, Switzerland (2012), and her mixed media work dealing with identity, nostalgia, the individual and the collective, has been exhibited in Palestine, Milan, the Czech Republic and Hong Kong. Ruba lives and works in Jerusalem, where she has taught and led art workshops.
Rasha Salah is the Executive Manager of Dar El-Nimer, a nonprofit foundation that opened in Beirut in May 2016. A graduate in Social and Cultural Development from Bordeaux II, France, she was Grant Manager at the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture from 2010–15. The author of L'an prochain à Tiberiade (Albin Michel) she is also the co-director of Femmes Palestiniennes...Les Oubliées de la Paix (with Francis Bouchet and Gilles Signard).
Sohail Salem (b. Gaza, 1974) is an artist and graphic designer who received his BA in fine arts from Al-Aqsa University in 1999. He has exhibited in many local and international exhibitions, has had four solo exhibitions and has been invited as an artist-in-residence in Switzerland (2005) and at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2010). He has taught at Al-Aqsa University and is one of the co-founders of the Eltiqa artists' collective.
Rabia Salfiti (b. 1979) graduated in photography from Wizo School of Art and Design (2014), has a diploma in Interior Design from the University of Florence in Italy, and studied philosophy at the University of Varanasi in India. His work often involves his own body and is shaped by the interest and inspection of the body, mind and spirit, between the micro and macro and where the two dissolve, in order to illuminate social and political boundaries, conflict and identity.
Somar Sallam (b. 1988, Damascus) graduated in fine arts from the University of Damascus in 2010. She has shown her work and been a participant in workshops, residencies and festivals in Syria, Lebanon and Algeria. Somar works as an illustrator for children's books and has had her illustrations published in children's magazines across the Arab world. An illustrated book she contributed to, Freelestine, won first prize at the International Comic Festival in Algeria in 2015.
Larissa Sansour (b. East Jerusalem, 1973) studied fine arts in London, New York and Copenhagen. Utilising photography, installation and sculpture, her work is immersed in the current political dialogue. Central to it is the tug and pull between fiction and reality. Her films and installations have been widely shown, in recent solo exhibitions in the UK, Copenhagen, Finland, Sweden, Dubai, Madrid and Istanbul, and in the Istanbul, Busan and Liverpool biennales. She currently lives and works in London.
Salah Saouli lives in Berlin and Beirut, and his work has been shown internationally. He studied sculpture and painting at the University of Arts in Berlin after receiving his diplome des etudes superieures in fine arts at the Lebanese University in Beirut. Saouli has been the recipient of the First Award of Blickachse 2006 (Germany), and the Honour Award at the Third Sharjah Biennale. In 2015, he received the DANZ award in the 'Sculpture by the Sea' biennale in Denmark.
Yara Saqfalhait is a researcher, architect and co-founder of Group28, a research collective looking at the built environment in Palestine. Yara is interested in researching topics related to the dynamics of knowledge production and pedagogy in architecture. She has published various articles in Bidayat Magazine, Zawia, Interruptions and Jadaliyya.
Vivien Sansour founded the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library as part of her work on seed autonomy. Trained in anthropology, Vivien works with farmers worldwide on issues of agriculture and independence. Her solo show, 'Terrain: Palestinian Agri-Resistance', created a collection of people and landscape portraits of agri-Cultural Palestine. Vivien participated in the Confrontation Through Art residency in Nicosia, Cyprus as part of the collective exhibit 'Where The Sky And The Earth Touch'.
Marcel Schwierin is a curator, filmmaker and co-founder of the Werkleitz Biennial in Halle (Germany), the experimental film and video database 'cinovid', and the Arab Shorts festival in Cairo. His own films include The Images (1994) and Eternal Beauty (2003). He has curated regularly for the Werkleitz Biennials, the Goethe Institute, and the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. From 2010–15, he was film and video curator of the Berlin-based art and digital culture festival 'transmediale'. Since 2015, he has been co-director (with Edit Molnár) of the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany.
Rufaida Sehwail, a Palestinian refugee from the town of Magdal, was born in Gaza City in 1987. She studied at Al-Aqsa University for her BA degree in visual art and a higher diploma in education. Her award-winning work incorporates visual art, photography and design, as well as making toys and using drawing to provide psychological support. She has had two solo exhibitions and has shown in more than forty group exhibitions.
Randa Shaath is a photographer based in Cairo who teaches photography at the American University in Cairo. She is a trainer and mentor of award-winning photographers of AFAC's Documentary Photography Programme, a graphic designer for children's books at Dar Al-Fata Al-Arabi, and from 2008-14 was the photo editor of Al-Shorouk daily newspaper. She has published three monographs and has exhibited her work in Egypt and abroad. In 2006, Shaath represented Egypt at the Bienal de São Paulo.
Majed Shala was born in Gaza and graduated with a MA from Scranton University, USA in 2001. A member of the Palestinian Artists Union, he is a founding member of the Shababek gallery space and artists' group in Gaza. He has been an artist-in-residence at Darat al Funun in Amman, and has shown his work in many solo and group exhibitions in Palestine and regionally, as well as in South America, the UAE, the USA, South Africa and Europe.
Rawan Sharaf is a PhD candidate at Birmingham City University (BCU-UK) pursuing a research investigating the politics of contemporary art practices and the art institution in Palestine. Active across various cultural practices and institutions, Rawan lectured at IAAP, Dar al-Kalima and BCU and worked with Riwaq Biennale and Birzeit University Museum. She contributed to the establishment of al Hoash Gallery and was its former Director (2006–2013). Rawan was on the founding committee of Qalandiya International 2012.
Yara Sharif is an architect and academic with an interest in design as a means to facilitate and empower 'forgotten' communities, while also interrogating the relationship between politics and architecture. Combining research with design, her work runs parallel between Golzari-NG Architects, London, and the design studio at the School of Architecture, University of Westminster. Her book Architecture of Resistance: Searching for spaces of possibilities under the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict is forthcoming from Ashgate (2016).
Mohammad Shaqdih (1976) lives and works in Amman. Shaqdih is Assistant Director and Outreach Officer at Darat al-Funun/The Khalid Shoman Foundation.He also works as an artist, printmaker and graphic designer. His artist's book The Snake was included in the 3rd International Artist's Books Biennale held in Alexandria in 2008. He was awarded the 2012–13 Cultural Heritage Fellowship for Museums and Community Engagement at University College London.
Shela Sheikh is a lecturer in the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, and convenes the MA in Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy. Current projects include a monograph on martyr 'video-testimonies'; a special issue of Third Text (co-edited with Ros Gray) on 'Botanical Conflicts: Contemporary Art, Visual Cultures and the Politics of Soil and Planting'; and an edited collection (with Matthew Fuller), Cultivation: Vegetal Lives, Global Systems and the Politics of Planting.
Laila Shawa (b. 1940, Gaza) graduated summa cum laude in Fine Arts from the Italian Accademia di Belle Arti in 1964 and received a diploma in plastic arts from the Accademia San Giacomo in Rome. From 1965 to 1967, she returned to Gaza to teach arts and crafts to underprivileged children. She now lives and works in London. As a Palestinian artist, Shawa's concern is to reflect the political realities of her country, becoming, in the process, a chronicler of events. Her work is based on a heightened sense of realism and targets injustice and persecution wherever their roots may be.
Tina Sherwell graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London, in Textiles and Critical Theory and received her PhD from the University of Kent in Image Studies. Previously Executive Director of the Virtual Gallery at Birzeit University, she was Programme Leader in Fine Art at Winchester School of Art in the UK (2005–07). She has written extensively on Palestinian art in catalogues, journals, monographs and books, and is currently the Director of The International Academy of Art Palestine.
Adania Shibli (b. 1974, Palestine) currently lives between Jerusalem and Berlin. Her novels, plays, short stories and narrative essays have been published, also in translation, in various anthologies, art books and literary magazines. She has twice been awarded the A.M. Qattan Foundation's Young Writer's Award, in 2001 and in 2003. She also edited Dispositions (Ramallah: Qattan, 2012), an art book featuring contemporary Palestinian artists. Shibli is also engaged in academic research and teaching.
Reem Shilleh is a researcher, curator and writer whose work expands across the moving image spectrum, often focusing on film. Her research interests have led into projects that explore and discuss the Palestinian narrative and its historical formation in regards to image production, both moving and still. In 2011 she co-founded Subversive Film, a collective that produces research-based works in relation to rare filmic material on Palestine and the region. She is based in Ramallah.
Nida Sinnokrot received his BA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MFA from Bard College. In 2001 he participated in the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program, and was a 2002 Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellow. His multimedia work has featured in 'Tea with Nefertiti' (2012/14); 'Biennial Cuvée – World Selection of Contemporary Art '(2010); the 2009 Sharjah Biennial; 'Never-Part – Histories of Palestine', Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (2008/09); and the 2008 Jerusalem Show. He lives and works in Palestine.
Hana Sleiman is a researcher and archivist. Her work focuses on archive creation and appropriation in modern Palestinian history and its effects on the competing narratives on Palestine. Sleiman received her MA from Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies in 2013. She was a Special Collections Librarian at the American University of Beirut Library Archives from 2014–16.
Michael Sorkin is Principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio, a global design practice with a special interest in the city and green architecture. Current work includes planning and design for cities, offices and housing in China, Turkey and Australia. The President and founder of Terreform, a non-profit institute dedicated to research into just and sustainable urbanism, he is Professor of Architecture at The City College of New York and the author or editor of 18 books on architecture and urbanism, including The Next Jerusalem and Against the Wall. He is also the architecture critic for The Nation.
Beth Stryker is co-founder of CLUSTER (Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research), a platform for urban research, architecture, art and design initiatives in downtown Cairo. Stryker has curated exhibitions and programs for D-CAF in Cairo, Beirut Art Center, Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, AIANY/Center for Architecture in New York (where she held the position of Director of Programs), and the MCA in Chicago, among other venues.
Studioazue is a consulting and design team of development practitioners established in 2011 by a group of architects, engineers and sociologists. Our main challenge is to promote the transition to a low carbon society in developing and low income countries, converting high-tech models into systems applicable and replicable in diverse geographical, social and economic contexts.
Subversive Film is a cinema research and production initiative that aims to cast new light upon historic film works related to Palestine and the region, to engender support for film preservation, and to investigate archival practices and effects. Subversive Film was formed in 2011 by Mohanad Yaqubi, Reem Shilleh and Nick Denes and is based in Ramallah and London.
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Naoko Takahashi is a London-based performance and installation artist, working with a wide range of mediums. She has exhibited and performed widely in the UK and abroad including Tate Modern, Raven Row, the Whitechapel Gallery, IMT Gallery in London and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow. She has undertaken various artist-in-residence programmes, and completed numerous commissions and publications as well as having worked on a long-term project with L'appartement 22 in Morocco between 2009 and 2012.
Salim Tamari is a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies and the former director of the IPS-affiliated Institute of Jerusalem Studies. The Editor of Jerusalem Quarterly and Hawliyyat al Quds, he is also professor of sociology at Birzeit University and an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. He is the author of several works on urban culture, political sociology, biography and social history, and the social history of the eastern Mediterranean.
Wael Tarabieh (b. 1968, Majdal Shams) graduated from The Repin Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Russia in 1996. From 1996–2012 he was a teacher of plastic arts and is manager of the Fateh Al Mudarris Center of Arts and Culture in Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights.
Omar Imseeh Tesdell is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Birzeit University and a postdoctoral fellow of the Arab Council for Social Sciences. His research focuses on environmental questions and sovereignty in the Middle East. He was awarded his PhD in geography from the University of Minnesota in 2013. The Social Science Research Council IDRF, Palestinian American Research Center, and the University of Minnesota have all supported his research.
The Little Lantern Dance and Theatre Workshop was established in 2008 as part of the AJIAL – Social Communication Center in Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. It aims to engage with children and teenagers in producing creative content that is committed to the causes and concerns of the people of the camp. Previously, they have performed in Ma'rouf Saa'd, Madina and Babel theatres in Lebanon, in addition to dance festivals in Beirut and France.
Victoria Thong Jiahui was educated in Singapore and London. Her interest in architecture as a cultural product has led to projects based in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Her work with ETH's Future Cities Laboratory investigated Singapore's modernist movement and culminated in an exhibition in Singapore and Zurich. Navigating these vastly different contexts, her Masters research project in Jerusalem explored the notion of 'Home' and Absentee Law.
Oraib Toukan is an artist currently based in Oxford, England where she is completing her PhD at Oxford University's Ruskin School of Art. Recent exhibitions include the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow; the Asia Pacific Triennial; the Mori Art Museum; Kunstraum Muenchen; and the 11th Istanbul Biennial. Until autumn 2015 she was head of the Arts Division and Media Studies programme at Bard College Al Quds; she is visiting faculty at the International Academy of Art Palestine.
Claudia Turton is a socially-minded designer currently training to become an architect at the University of Westminster. Claudia joined Emrys Architects' London office after graduating from the University of Liverpool with the highest award for architecture for a community housing design. During her year out working in practice, she worked on a diverse range of projects, from individual properties to masterplans. In her first year at the University of Westminster, Claudia has developed a style and begun to explore her interests in greater depth, resulting in an evocative masterplan project which aims to use architecture to start a conversation.
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Dean Robson VanderVord is a designer and maker with experience in complex social and material environments. Educated in the UK, his academic projects are situated across diverse places, from Malaysia to Yorkshire. He worked at EMBT in Barcelona, where he drew and consolidated large coded drawings for a tower in Taiwan and detailed a rural villa in China. During his postgraduate study at the University of Westminster, his own design methodology was deeply explored and refined in two different design studios, resulting in a belief that rigorous research into place leads to bottom-up tailored design.
Vivian Ziherl is a critic and curator from Brisbane, living and working in Amsterdam. In 2015 she established the art and research project Frontier Imaginaries. Through exhibitions, conferences and publishing it seeks to work trans-locally in order to map the ongoing significance of the frontier formation in the global era.
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Adnan Yahya (b. 1960) lives and works in Amman. 'By combining a number of visual forms throughout the years, all fused in one human crucible, I have sought to represent the anxiety of humankind. We see human beings with their perennial visions unchanged, with the same age-old questions and the same old corrupt, despotic and powerful faces, the power of men to destroy each other's freedom.'
Mohanad Yaqubi is a filmmaker, producer and co-founder of Idioms Film. He teaches film studies at the International Academy of Art Palestine. He is a co-founder of Subversive Films, a curatorial and research collective focusing on militant film practices. Yaqubi is a producer of internationally screened films and the creator and producer of 'Suspended Time'.
Anna-Esther Younes completed her PhD in Geneva and is currently based in Berlin. Her work focuses on questions of race and racialisation in Germany and Europe, psychoanalysis and race, colonialism, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and anti-Islamic racism in Germany and Europe. She is the author of Germany's contribution to the 'European Islamophobia Report' in March 2016, a review of Sayed Kashua's book Native (July 2016), and organised the first month-long, interdisciplinary international Palestinian Arts Festival in Berlin in 2016.
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Akram Zaatari is an artist and filmmaker whose practice is tied to collecting. He is deeply invested in researching photographic practices, particularly in the Middle East, and examining how photography has served to shape notions of aesthetics, postures and social codes. Since 1999, Zaatari has been focusing on the archive of Studio Shehrazade in Saida, studying the work of photographer Hashem el Madani as a register of social relationships and of photographic practices.
Santiago Rizo Zambrano is an architect from Caracas, Venezuela. He has worked in practice since 2009 on projects of all scales, with a special interest in public spaces. He has also participated in community-based initiatives to promote a better urban life in the city. Santiago recently completed his MA in architecture at the University of Westminster and is a full time architectural assistant at Golzari-NG Architects.
Shadi Zmorrod is a theatre actor and director born and raised in Jerusalem. At the age of 12, he joined Ashtar Theatre where he has been a drama teacher and actor, teaching children and adults from all walks of life. In 2000, he took part in his first circus workshop. In 2006, together with Jessika Devlieghere, he laid the foundation for the Palestinian Circus School.