Arab art all set to make an impression in Hawaii

As an Iraqi-Palestinian, displacement is something that Sama Alshaibi knows all about. Conflicts over land and oil in both motherlands forced her to live overseas. She settled in Tuscon, Arizona and more than a decade later, became a naturalised US citizen. But as an artist, Alshaibi is firmly and foremost a global citizen and her art, although it addresses her own issues, is cleverly relevant to anyone who chooses to engage with it.

“We are all a bit nomadic,” she says, during a long conversation about Silsila, a video photographic project she began in 2009. “Our world is globalised and people are always moving between communities. Although we are not like the desert Bedouins and we now have planes to jump between points, what I am interested in is what is between those points.”

Silsila, which translated from Arabic  means chain or link, depicts Alshaibi’s  cyclic journey  through significant  deserts and endangered  water sources of Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, the UAE, Oman and the Maldives. In poetic silence, or accompanied by ambient sounds, Alshaibi walks through desertscapes and waterscapes inspired by the nomadic traditions  of the region and  the  travel  journals of Ibn  Battuta, the 14th-century  explorer.

“The water is the subject, the sand is the subject and my body is the subject; it is all connected,” she says. “Neither water or sand are constrained by artificial borders that have been placed upon us and so, with this work, I am making an appeal to remind us of all our interconnected relationships. Through travelling, journeying and getting to know each other, we must unite. It is the only way to survive.”

Alshaibi is one of 12 artists showing in an exhibition called Chain of Fire, which serves as a prologue exhibition for the inaugural 2016 edition of the Honolulu Biennial. She is also part of an artistic residency under the New Frontiers Program, a cultural and education platform focused on exploring diverse global Islamic communities through the arts.

Original article by Anna Seaman

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Arab art all set to make an impression in Hawaii