Ahlam Shibli

Ahlam Shibli ( (فلسطين)), is a Palestinian artist of Bedouin descent who was born in Palestine in 1970. Shibli has worked since 1996 in the field of photography, realising research projects that initially focused on the living conditions of the Palestinian population under Israeli rule, e.g. Unrecognised (1999– 2000), Goter (2002–03), and Trackers (2005). More recent works broadened the scope of Shibli’s research about notions of home and belonging, approaching such subjects as Eastern lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people in London, Zurich, Barcelona, and Tel Aviv (Eastern LGBT, 2006), immigrant care workers and their elderly employers in Barcelona (Dependence, 2007), and children in orphanages in Poland (Dom Dziecka: The House Starves When You Are Away, (2008), and one and the same population, in certain cases even the same individuals, who resisted occupation by the Germans and suffered from their atrocities waged a few years later colonial wars in indochina and Algeria against peoples who in their turn claimed independence (Trauma, 2008-09). Shibli’s works have been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Istanbul Biennial (2005), T1, Torino (2005), the São Paulo Biennial (2006), the Kunsthalle Basel (2006), documenta 12, Kassel (2007), DCA, Dundee (2007), the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2008), MACBA, Barcelona (2008), the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2009), Darat al Funun, The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman (2010), and Château de Sédières, Clergoux, Corrèze (2010). Different publications have been devoted to her work, among which Goter (Tel Aviv Museum, 2003), Lost Time (Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2003), and Trackers (Kunsthalle Basel and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2006), and Trauma (Peuple et Culture Corrèze, 2010).¹