2023 SPE Annual ConferenceSpeakers

Sama Alshaibi

Saturday, March 18, 2023 @ 6:00pm, Grandballroom I & II

An Index of Return - Sama Alshaibi

Sama Alshaibi's (b. 1973, Iraq) photographs and videos situate her own body as a site of performance, considering the social and gendered impacts of war and migration. Her work complicates the coding of the Arab female figure found in the image history of photographs and moving images. Alshaibi's monograph, Sand Rushes In, was published by Aperture, NYC. In 2021, Alshaibi was named a Guggenheim Fellow in Photography. She has been featured in several biennials, including the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (Italy), the 21st International Art Biennial of Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia, 2020), and the 13th Cairo International Biennale (Egypt, 2019). Solo exhibitions include the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, NY (2017), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ (2016); Ayyam Gallery, Dubai (2015); Ayyam Gallery, London (2015)

Born in Basra to an Iraqi father and Palestinian mother, Sama Alshaibi is based in the United States, where she is a Regents Chair of Photography, Video and Imaging at the University of Arizona, Tucson. She holds a BA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA in Photography, Video, and Media Arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder.