Sama Alshaibi’s art has significant meaning, infused with poetic visuals, it propels empathy, engaging in socio-political themes such as memory, exile, migration, war, gender, environmental concerns, reflecting on identity, belonging, spaces of conflict.
Through photography, performance, video and installation, integrating her lived experience, the artist embodies different characters, portraits, utilising the body to convey important notions, rendering the byproducts of war visible, with Alshaibi’s powerful visuals guiding the viewer into the different themes.
The artist’s recent body of work will be showcased at Ayyam Gallery in an exhibition entitled Tterss—طرس , referring to palimpsest, which Alshaibi explores in her work through collage.
The mixed media collages and video art reimagine Baghdad’s transformation—throughout its peaks, declines, potential and possibilities. Alternative visions for the city are looked into through Alshaibi’s art.
Born in Basra, Alshaibi had not visited her homeland Iraq for 40 years, only returning numerous times between 2021 to 2023.
Longing to reorient herself with Baghdad, the artist’s new body of work sees various layers of mediums and imagery applied to reconstruct an abstracted and interrupted history and reality of the city. Inspired by the archives of several architects, including the renowned Iraqi Rifat Chadirji, ‘سرط’, as well as drawing inspiration from Andreas Huyssen’s writings on ‘miniatures’ of urban reality, Alshaibi’s work focuses on the spatial, material, and technological fragments of the city and its people.
Using LiDAR technology to scan the urban landscape, Alshaibi built an extensive repertoire of factual measurements, mapping the city’s neighbourhoods, with data mappings interwoven with the artist’s photographs and archival materials.
Political, historical, perceptual imprints form layers, evoking the city’s contradictions and progressions, modernisation and historical memory, the effects, tensions and complexities of the aftermath of war. The transformation, development and memory of Baghdad is seen in Tterss—طرس through Sama Alshaibi’s lens, constructing a speculative space which pushes for an understanding of Arab cities as microcosms of broader global crises, layers linking past and present, socio-political notions, revival, lived experience, memories and longing.
Visit Sama Alshaibi, Tterss—طرس at Ayyam Gallery in Dubai from the 15th April to 30th May 2025.
Sama Alshaibi, 'Duplicates', 2024, Mixed media collage, 77 x 107 cm
Sama Alshaibi, Tterss—طرس at Ayyam Gallery in Dubai from 15th April to 30th May 2025
Sama Alshaibi is Chair and Regents Professor of Photography, Video Art, and Imagining at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Alshaibi holds a BA in Photography from Columbia College and an MFA in Photography, Video, and Media Arts from the University of Colorado. She was a recipient of the Fulbright Scholar Fellowship in 2014 as part of a residency at the Palestine Museum, where she developed an educational program while conducting independent research, as well as the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2021. Alshaibi has also participated in significant residencies including MacDowell, Bellagio and Artpace.
Recently, Alshaibi has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah (2023), Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona (2022), Artpace, San Antonio, Texas (2019); Cairo International Biennale (2019); Pen + Brush, New York (2019); Ayyam Gallery, Al Quoz, Dubai (2019, 2018, 2015); Arizona Biennale, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, USA (2018); American University Museum, Washington (2018, 2017); Beirut Spring Festival, Beirut, Lebanon (2018); Palazzo Granafei- Nervegna, Brindisi (2017); Tuscon Museum of Art, Arizona (2017); Johnson Museum of Art, New York (2017); Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York (2017); Marta Herford Museum, Herford (2017); Museum De Wieger, Deurne (2017); Brentwood Arts Exchange, Maryland (2017); Honolulu Biennial, Honolulu (2017, 2014); Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona (2016); Desai Matta Gallery - the California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco (2016); FotoFest, Houston (2016, 2014); Pirineos Sur Festival, Lanuza (2015); Palais
De La Culture, Constantine (2015); Ayyam Gallery, London (2015); Arab American National Museum, Dearborn (2015); the Maldives Pavilion of the Venice Biennale (2013); University of Southampton, Southampton (2013); Edge of Arabia, London (2012); HilgerBROTKunsthalle, Vienna (2012); Institut Du Monde Arabe, Paris (2012); Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah (2012); and Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012).
Alshaibi’s works are housed in public and private collections, including the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art a Cornell University, NY, USA; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ, USA; ASU Art Museum, Tempe, AZ, USA; Museums at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, USA; Arab American National Museum, Dearborn, MI, USA; Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, USA; the Nadour Collection; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Tunis; Light Work Collection, Syracuse; University of Illinois, Chicago; University of Colorado Art Museum, Boulder; The Photo Archive of the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; and the C.N. Gorman Museum at the University of California, Davis.