Ala Younis is an artist, curator and publisher, whose work investigates archives, film remains and artistic practices. Her projects have been shown at the Venice, Istanbul and Gwangju Biennials, at the New Museum in New York, the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris), Darat al Funun (Amman), and the Contemporary Image Collective (Cairo), amongst other venues. She has curated several shows and film programmes, as well as Kuwait's first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013 and the project ‘Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence’.
Ibrahim Al-Muzayen is an artist who works with installations, drawings and collages, and is also a theatre director, set designer and drama therapist. He has had several solo exhibitions in Palestine, Japan and Indonesia, produced performance installations on the Gaza beach, and contributed to group exhibitions in Palestine, France, Spain and the UAE. Ibrahim Al-Muzayen is currently the Head of the Resource Centre of the Yasser Arafat Museum in Ramallah.
Adania Shibli is a writer of novels, plays, short stories and narrative essays that have been published in various anthologies, art books and literary and cultural magazines in different languages. She has twice been awarded the A.M. Qattan Foundation’s Young Writer's Award – in 2001 for her novel Masaas, translated into English as Touch (Northampton: Clockroot, 2009), and in 2003 for her novel Kulluna Ba’id bethat al Miqdar aan el-Hub, translated into English as We Are All Equally Far from Love (Northampton: Clockroot, 2012). Her latest novel is Tafsil Thanawi (Minor Detail), published by Al-Adab, Beirut, 2017.
Her non-fiction books include Dispositions (Ramallah: A.M. Qattan Foundation, 2012), an art book exploring the element of movement in the works of contemporary Palestinian visual artists; and an edited collection of essays, A Journey of Ideas Across: In Dialog with Edward Said (Berlin: HKW, 2014). Alongside her writing, Shibli is engaged in academic research and teaching. Since 2013 she has been a visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural studies, Birzeit University, Palestine.
Samar Martha is founder and director of Gallery One in Palestine. She was a co-founder and director of ArtSchool Palestine until 2013, and one of the original founders of Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem. She has worked with Visiting Arts, London, on a range of projects across the Middle East, and has been writing, lecturing and curating exhibitions in the UK and abroad, with a particular focus on Palestinian and Middle Eastern contemporary art practices, including This Day at the Tate Modern, London (2007), Still on Vacation at the Nobel Peace Centre, Oslo (2007), and Future Movements: Jerusalem at the Liverpool Biennial (2010).
Sliman Mansour Born in Birzeit in 1947, Sliman Mansour studied fine art at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem (1967–70). Mansour has been present in the Palestinian arts scene since the 1970s. He was one of the first popular Palestinian artists to turn away from painting and used unconventional methods in his art. He participated in many solo and group exhibitions in countries such as Japan, Russia, Norway, US, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and Egypt. At the Cairo Biennale in 1998, his piece Ana Ismail (I am Ismail) won first prize. Mansour authored two books on Palestinian folklore and currently teaches art. He is also one of the founding members of the Al-Wasiti Art Centre in Jerusalem, where he is the director. His masterpiece, Jamal al-Mahamel, is one of the most popular symbolic paintings in the Arab world. His paintings decorate the homes and offices of art collectors around the world.
Jury Consultant
Huda Odeh-Laban studied community development in Lyon, France. She has been developing her career in resource development and programme management by working with different Palestinian and international organisations, including the National Conservatory of Music, for the last eleven years. In late 2011, she began working as an independent consultant in the cultural sector. Her focus since then has been on programme and resource development, networking, strategic planning, and conducting research and assessment studies in the sector.