Faculty member’s artwork housed at international museums
The artwork of Rula Halawani, a faculty member at the bachelor’s program in contemporary visual art at Birzeit University’s Faculty of Art, Music and Design, is on view at leading international museums. Halawani’s photographs are now among the permanent collections of international museums in France, Spain, and the UAE.
The museums house Halawni’s photographs collected in series, each of which has a unique title, symbolism and description. The first series is on exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France at Centre Pompidou Museum in Paris, France and consists of 30 detailed photographs titled “Intimate Installation.” Showing They capture the conditions at and people who cross Qalandia checkpoint and reflect, as Halawani explains, the impact of occupation on Palestinians daily-life.
Another series of Halawni’s photographs, housed at Institut Valencià d'Art Modern in Spain and titled “Gates to Heaven,” depicts the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City and shows the eight ancient gates that lead through this wall, juxtaposing them with photos of the Israeli separation wall. Halawni expressed how the photographs of this series show how the separation wall prevents Palestinians from reaching their Old City―the atmosphere and conditions of which, she added, are no longer vibrant.
The third series, titled “The Bride is Beautiful, but She is Married to Another Man,” is located at the Sharjah Art Foundation in the UAE. Halawni remarked on this series by saying that it captures images of checkpoints that symbolize the Israeli lockdown imposed upon many Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The series also contains four portraits that show, Halawni explains, the physical suffering of the Palestinian people who must pass these checkpoints. Halawni shows photographs that in the form of television screens depict Palestinian history from 1900–1947, and capture how Palestinians lived before the onset of the ongoing conflict.
Born in 1964, Halawani holds a bachelor of arts degree in advanced photography from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada (1989); and a master of arts degree in photographic studies from the University of Westminster, London (2001).
