The Middle East Institute is pleased to host internationally acclaimed, Gaza-born multi-media artist Taysir Batniji in a conversation with Jerusalem Fund curator Dagmar Painter.
Batniji explores themes of displacement, mobility, and the inhibition of movement through his work, which includes video, photography, installation art, performance and painting. Traveling between France, where he lives, and his homeland, Palestine, Batniji documents Palestinian reality in a physically vivid, anti-spectacular way, inviting audiences to reflect on those realities away from the familiar and the expected.
A wine and cheese reception will begin at 6:00pm, followed by Mr. Batniji's talk at 6:30pm.
About the Speakers
Taysir Batniji is the winner of several art prizes, including the 2012 Abraaj Capital Art Prize. He was recently awarded an arts residency in New York at the International Studio & Curatorial Program by Edge of Arabia in partnership with Art Jameel, as part of a multi-year engagement in the US. He will remain in the US until September 2014. Born in Gaza in 1966, Batniji studied art at Al-Najah University in Nablus. In 1994, he was awarded a fellowship to study at the School of Fine Arts in Bourges. Since then, he has been dividing his time between France and Palestine. His works can be found in the Centre Pompidou and the FNAC in France, the V&A and The Imperial War Museum in London, the Queensland Art Gallery in Australia and Zayed National Museum in Abu Dhabi.
Following his first solo show in Paris of works produced in Gaza in 2002, his participation in a number of exhibitions, biennales and residencies in Europe and across the world grew to include: Heterotopias at the Thessalonique Biennale in 2007, the Sharjah Biennale in 2007, Palestine c/o Venice at the Venice Biennale in 2009, The Future of a Promise at the Venice Biennale in 2011, Now Babylon at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Recreational Purpose at the National Museum of Bahrain and Everyday Rituals at the Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah in 2014.
Dagmar Painter transformed an ad hoc exhibit space into Washington D.C.'s only full-time art gallery featuring the work of Arab and Arab-American artists. She has lived and worked in the Arab world for over 12 years and has traveled extensively in the Muslim world for over 30 years. In Washington, she previously established and ran the art gallery of the Embassy of Tunisia. She was an Advisory Review Panelist for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Grant Panel, a nominator for the Smithsonian Institution SARF awards, and a Juror for the Torpedo Factory Art Studios. She has written and lectured extensively in the U.S. and abroad on cross-cultural and arts issues, at such venues as the Textile Museum in Washington D.C. and Meridian House International.