Samah Hijawi

Samah Hijawi (PHD) is a multimedia artist and an astrologer. Her projects are deeply rooted in historical narratives which are used to re-imagine our contemporary life beyond the radicalized and polarized discourses that direct our lives today. In her recent project Kitchen. Table., she researches ideas around collectivity and inter-connectedness through food, migration, and the body as a site of food memory. 

She recently completed a PhD in Art Practice titled Chicken Scribbles and the Dove that Looks Like a Frog, where she explored deconstructing colonial representations of Palestine through performance and collage. This gave birth to a curated and pedagogical project titled Aesthetics of the Political, that explored how artists materialise their political ideas and positions into aesthetic form. 

In her past life, she collaborated with Ola El-Khalidi and Diala Khasawneh in directing Makan Art Space (2003-2016), an independent space for contemporary art in Amman, Jordan. And together with Shuruq Harb and Toleen Touq she co-curated the platform The River has Two Banks (2012-2017), initiated to address the distances and proximities between Jordan and Palestine.