Sama Alshaibi

Sama Alshaibi is an artist born in 1973, in Basra, Iraq to an Iraqi father and Palestinian mother and is now a naturalized US citizen.
Alshaibi's works in photography, video art and sculpture to evoke the language of suffering, displacement and loss. Her poetic and lyrical approach contrasts the depiction of her own history of living in war and the double negation to her familial homelands. Alshaibi often uses her own body in her works to test the limits of access and privilege; infiltrating guarded spaces, negotiating borders and testing the dynamics of power between nation/state and its citizenry. Alshaibi is also interested in the spectrum of control and domination, whether it’s the body’s relationship to land and national identity, or the experience between humans’ competing for resources and power. Whether it's the threshold of two different existential planes, of disorientation, and spaces between spaces, her work is rooted in the anxieties of the human experience. 

Sama Alshaibi received her MFA from the University of Colorado in Photography/Video and Media Arts in 2005. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Photography/Video Art at University of Arizona. Her work has been exhibited at arts institutions and galleries in in over 20 countries including Exit Art, NYC, Traffic, Dubai, Al Hoash, Jerusalem, DARB 1718, Cairo, The Bronx Museum, NYC and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver. Her 28 time-based works (video art and films) have screened in numerous film festivals internationally, including Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece, CinemaEast Film Festival, NYC, DOKUFEST, Kosovo and MidEast Cut, Copenhagen/Denmark & Helsinki/Finland.