@HOME with ... SAMA ALSHAIBI & RANIA MATAR

Watch the recording of this event.

"Women empowerment through a lens"

The two artists, moderated by Maya, will highlight their different approach to a common concept in a « compare and contrast » discussion.

Sama Alshaibi Iraqui, living in the USA, is a conceptual artist. Her photographs, videos and immersive installations examine the mechanisms of fragmentation in the aftermath of war and exile. They often feature a female figure that references a complex site of struggle and identification and confront an image history of photographs and moving images through a feminist perspective. Sama was featured in solo and group exhibitions around the world and took part in various international Biennale.

Her work is in the permanent collections of several museums, institutions and private collections worldwide.

She is currently a Professor of Photography, Video and Imaging at University of Arizona.

Rania Matar is a Lebanese‐born American woman and mother. Her cultural background, cross‐cultural experience, and personal narrative inform her photography. She has dedicated her work to exploring issues of personal and collective identity, through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood ‐ both in the United States where she lives and the Middle East where she is from, in an effort to focus on notions of identity and individuality all within the context of the underlying universality of these experiences. Matar's work has been widely published and exhibited in museums worldwide. She has published three books: L’Enfant‐Femme, 2016; A Girl and Her Room, 2012; Ordinary Lives, 2009. Her work is in the permanent collections of several museums, institutions and private collections worldwide. She is currently associate professor of photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and regularly offers workshops, talks, class visits and lectures at museums, galleries, schools and colleges in the US and abroad.

Maya Samawi, based in Dubai, has graduated with a BS in architectural studies alongside a double minor in Art History and Business Administration. She is currently the director at Ayyam Gallery, Dubai