Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Shadi Alzaqzouq is a Palestinian contemporary artist born in 1981 in Benghazi, Libya, to Parents originally from Jaffa, Palestine. Alzaqzouq grew up in Kofra, Libya, and relocated with his family to Gaza, Palestine, following the 1995 Oslo Peace Accords. Shadi studied music at the Palestine Technical Institute in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, after which he taught music at a local primary school for five years. In 2002 he joined an artists' collective known as Shababeek, meaning a Window into art, in Gaza. In 2006 he won the AM Qattan Foundation, Young Palestinian Artist Prize. That same year, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris offered Alzaqzouq an art residency. In 2007, he enrolled at Université Paris VIII and graduated with a BFA in plastic arts in 2009.
A provocateur at all levels, Alzaqzouq creates arresting vibrant paintings that are an eye-opener to reality. His paintings are hyperreal and surreal in style, most of which are painted with oil on canvas using a fine brush. Coming from a place under siege and continuously at war, his work suggests revolt and dismay. When he moved to Paris, the Israeli government policies obstructed his return to Gaza. As such, issues that pertain to exile, identity, and movement, are central in his work. In his representation, he discusses multiple layers of identities, including popular culture and satire.
Alzaqzouq reflected on the Arab Spring pro-democracy uprisings. It was inspirational for Alzaqzouq, who linked the Arab spring to a wishful third Palestinian intifada. As such, he created surreal paintings like Rock Me All Night Long featuring protesting young boys with eyeballs popped out. In a controversial series known as The Muslim Punk, Alzaqzouq sheds light on the Islamophobia discourse and the distorted image of Islam as 'uncivilized' and 'violent' promoted in the Western media. He painted women veiled with liberty spikes made of fabric cones, and young men dressed in punk leather jackets with colored Mohawk hairstyle giving the prayer in the streets.
His work caused heated controversy, especially his circular painting, shown in Art Dubai in 2012. It depicts a veiled woman with a bandana on the face holding underwear panties on which the word erhal is written in Arabic, meaning get out, or drive the dictators out. Again al Zaqzouq showed this work in the 2015 Banksy's Dismaland in the UK, which was a full-blown "bemusement park." Knowing that one of the participants was an Israeli artist, Alzaqzouq staged a protest against Israeli war crimes during the show by covering his work with bedsheets. It was a time when he most hit the headlines.
As a symbol of siege and separation, Alzaqzouq presented the apartheid wall in satirical settings with cheerleaders cheering his rivals. Dreaming of return, he imagined himself and his family members as human moles who could pave their way to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem in a large scale painting known as Underground Revolution.
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