“My works are the results of my continued examination of diverse experiences that usually only have one thing in common: my body,” artist Sama Alshaibi explains. “The questions and anxieties that distress my being are what motivates my practice.”
Alshaibi’s journey as a conceptual visual artist started with an interest in photojournalism. She soon decided to go into conceptual art instead. Her work still draws on those early days, but incorporates more breadth and range of both media and ideas.
In content, Alshaibi’s art explores many themes of ecological and political interactions with the human body. Her latest work, Cessation, features in The Crystal Bridge Museum’s State of the Art 2020 exhibition in Arkansas.
Sama Alshaibi Photographs Life
Born in Iraq, Alshaibi spent years as a refugee. These experiences feed heavily into her art.
“As a child of war, of exile, and even living illegally in the USA for many years, I understood the meaning of land,” Alshaibi tells Aesthetic Magazine. “That essential relationship between land and life is foundational for me.”
Alshaibi’s family fled Iraq to the Gulf States in 1981 due to the Iran-Iraq War. 5 years later, they ended up in the United States, where Alshaibi finished high school in Iowa. She then turned to art-focused higher education, which exposed her to a variety of artists who faced similar issues of identity and representation.
Her father taught Alshaibi photography when she was only 12 years old. She initially planned for a career as a war photographer. However, she found photojournalism to be “constrictive” and soon moved on to conceptual art.
“For me, conceptual art is more able to get to the real experiences of war, when compared to a photograph’s depiction of a fraction of a moment,” Alshaibi elaborates.
Efflorescence: Jawlan in Parenthesis
Following Ibn Battuta’s in Footsteps
“The more places I journeyed through, the more I understood about our innate human conditions reflected in the natural world around me, barren as most of it was,” reflects Alshaibi on the evolution of her Silsila series.
She has found herself inspired not only by her own story, but also by that of 14th century world traveller Ibn Battuta. Alshaibi based her series “Al Rihla” (“The Journey”) on his work. Specifically, the symmetry and ornament of Islamic art inspired her. This series features Alshaibi in vast landscapes alone among nature, coexisting and resisting.
From Alshaibi’s Silsila project
Currently a professor at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Alshaibi collaborates and creates with many ongoing projects and exhibitions. A list of her projects and their contents is available on her website and includes photography, videos, and photographs of sculptures and installations. Other than teaching and creating art, Alshaibi also won the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship in 2014 to travel to Ramallah, Palestine, where she conducted research and developed an education program at the Palestine Museum.
Sama Alshaibi: The Cessation and State of the Art 2020
Crystal Bridge Museum has temporarily closed due to the pandemic. However, Alshaibi’s latest project, The Cessation, awaits viewers in the museum’s State of the Art 2020 exhibition.
“The Cessation reflects my concerns with vulnerable communities, the aftermath of war, and rendering absence into visible form,” explains Alshaibi. “Words carved into vessels are drawn from lists of Iraqi academics assassinated and include: Mnemocide, Ambushed, She Was, Professora, Disappeared, Organized & Planned, Scrubbed, Shot Dead and Unknown.”
“The Cessation” calls attention to the invisibility of Iraqi women who have disappeared or been assassinated during the US led war in Iraq. The lack of official investigations has resulted in the ongoing targeted assassinations of other prominent women in Iraq today. The silhouetted neon figure recalls an iconic bronze fountain by the late Iraqi artist Mohammed Ghani Hikmat. That sculpture, Kahramana, is situated a traffic circle in Baghdad. The Cessation reflects my concerns with vulnerable communities, the aftermath of war, and rendering absence into visible form. Words carved into vessels are drawn from lists of Iraqi academics assassinated and include: Mnemocide, Ambushed, She Was, Professora, Disappeared, Organized & Planned, Scrubbed, Shot Dead and Unknown.
Although the pandemic has closed the museum temporarily, there are still virtual tours available, and fans can view more of Alshaibi’s work on her website.
(Documentation of installation exhibited on rooftop of Artpace, San Antonio, Texas).
Originally commissioned and produced by Artpace San Antonio.
Photo credit Seale Photography Studios.
The Cessation (Al-Takwir, The Folding Up).
Date: 2019.
Medium: neon, aluminum, acrylic, palm fronds, water, copper, terracotta, and sound.
Size: dimensions variable.
