Re-imagining the Female Figure in War and Conflict

Announced by The University of Pittsburgh

About the Event:

In conversation with conceptual artist Sama Alshaibi, Brown University professor Nadje Al-Ali and Columbia University professor Kathryn Spellman Poots will discuss her art and the significance of war, exile, borders and environmental destruction in her work. What role do gender and her body play in her work? And how does her art draw on historical sources and contemporary realities to express exploitations of freedom?

This conversation is part of a joint Center for Middle East Studies at Brown University and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University series on gender, art and body politics in the Middle East and its diasporas. The series examines intersecting inequalities and body politics expressed, represented and transgressed in both visual and performance art.

About the Speaker:

Born in Iraq and now based in the United States, Sama Alshaibi is an artist working between photography, video and installation. Her practice explores the notion of aftermath—the fragmentation and dispossession that violates the individual and a community following the destruction of their social, natural and built environment. She often complicates the coding of the Arab female figure found in the image history of photographs and moving images.

In 2021, Alshaibi was named a Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of the Phoenix Art Museum's Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award. Her work has been exhibited in numerous biennales and museums, including the 55th Venice Biennale, the 2020 State of the Art (Crystal Bridges Museum of Art), Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Institut Du Monde Arabe (Paris) and Barjeel Foundation (U.A.E.), among others. In 2015, Aperture published her monograph Sama Alshaibi: Sand Rushes In, featuring the artist’s Silsila series. Alshaibi is a Regents Professor of Art at University of Arizona, USA.