Sama Alshaibi, who works between photography, video, performance and installation, will present the next Hixson-Lied Visiting Scholar Lecture at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 9 in Richards Hall, Room 15.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Alshaibi is a professor of photography, video and imaging at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her work explores the notion of aftermath—the fragmentation and dispossession that violates individuals and communities following the destruction of their social, natural and built environments. She uses her body as both subject and medium, a site of encounter, periphery and refuge, all the while carrying the effects of war and dislocation.

Alshaibi’s powerful feminized representations resist a pretext for the subjection of Middle Eastern communities, re-calibrating and challenging a Western and patriarchal social order.

In 2021, Alshaibi was named a Guggenheim Fellow in photography and the recipient of the Phoenix Art Museum’s Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award. Her biennial participation includes the 55th Venice Biennale; State of the Art 2020, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art (2020); International Art Biennial of Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia, 2020); 13th Cairo International Biennale (2019); Honolulu Biennial (2017); Qalandia International Biennial (2016); and the FotoFest Biennial (2014).

She has exhibited at museums globally, including MoMA (New York), MOCA Jacksonville (Florida), Arab American National Museum (Michigan), MARTA Herford Museum (Germany), SMOCA (Arizona), the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (New York), Barjeel Foundation (Sharjah), Institut Du Monde Arabe (Paris), Bronx Museum (NYC), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Denver).

Alshaibi’s work has also been featured at the 24th Instants Video Festival (Mexico and France), BredaPhoto International (Netherlands), and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Greece). She has received numerous awards and grants, including the Artpace International Artist-in-Residence (San Antonio, 2019), First Prize Project Development Grant from the Center (Santa Fe, 2019), and the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture Visual Arts Grant (Beirut, 2018).

Her monograph, “Sama Alshaibi: Sand Rushes In” (New York: Aperture, 2015), features her Silsila series.

The last remaining lecture in the series will feature Aaron Spangler, sculptor and printmaker, on Nov. 30. Spangler is best known as a sculptor, where he reimagines the traditional medium and technique of woodcarving with a contemporary eye.

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln School of Art, Art History and Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students.

Underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment with additional support from other sources, the series enriches the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design. Each visiting artist or scholar spends one to three days on campus to meet with classes, participate in critiques and give demonstrations.

For more information on the series, contact the School of Art, Art History and Design at 402-472-5522 or e-mail schoolaahd@unl.edu.