Anderson Lecture
Monday, March 24, 2:00 p.m.
Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library
Sama Alshaibi (b. 1973, Iraq) is an artist based in the United States working with photography, video, and installation. Her practice explores the notion of aftermath – the fragmentation and dispossession that violate an individual and their community following the destruction of their social, natural, and built environment. In her photographs and videos, Alshaibi often uses her own body as both subject and medium; carrying the markings of war and dislocation, it features as a staging site for encounters, peripheries, and refuge. Her work complicates the coding of the Arab female figure found in the image history of photographs and moving images. Alshaibi's sculptural installations evoke the body's disappearance and act as counter-memorials to war and forced exile.
Alshaibi was named a Guggenheim fellow in 2021, the Art Matters Betty Parsons Fellow in 2023, a Fulbright Fellow in 2014, and a resident Fellow at the Rockefeller Bellagio Center, Italy, in 2024. Her work has been exhibited at numerous biennales and museums, including the 55th Venice Biennale, State of the Art 2020 at the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, the 13th Cairo Biennale, the Museum of Modern Art, the Institut du Monde Arabe, the Barjeel Foundation, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Arab American National Museum. Aperture Foundation published her monograph Sama Alshaibi: Sand Rushes In, featuring the artist’s Silsila series. Alshaibi holds a B.A. in Photography from Columbia College Chicago and an M.F.A. in Photography, Video, and Media Arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Alshaibi is a Regents Professor of Photography, Video, and Imaging at the University of Arizona.
