Special mention for a participant in Foreigners Everywhere
Motivation: “Samia Halaby has been a longstanding artist, teacher, and activist who the jury wishes to honor with a special mention. Her commitment to the politics of abstraction has been married to her unwavering attention to the suffering of the people of Palestine. Her gorgeously rendered modernist painting in the “Nucleo Storico” of Foreigners Everywhere, entitled Black is Beautiful, suggests not only the sovereignty of the imagination but also the importance of global solidarities.”
Displaced with her family from Palestine at the age of eleven, she became one of the pioneers of abstract art, influenced by Abstract Expressionism in dialogue with Islamic geometric patterns, the Bauhaus and the Soviet avant-garde. She demonstrates an incredible ability to renew her work, experimenting with kinetic and electronic art and being convinced that the use of technology is absolutely essential for an artist of our time. Her most recent works were produced using a Commodore Amiga.
