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Occupied Palestinian Territories, West Bank, August 2013. After grueling traffic at the Qalandia checkpoint, a young man enjoys a cigarette in his car as traffic finally clears on the last evening of Ramadan. A sheep, this year's sacrificial lamb for Eid, fills the entire passenger seat. Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR from the series «Occupied Pleasures» 2013.

Tanya Habjouqa: Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity + Picture of the Year: Exhibition & Seminar

 
Award-winning photographer, filmmaker and anthropologist Tanja Habjouqa (Jordan/US) opens Fotografihuset’s 2024 programme with a joint exhibition and seminar organised in collaboration with Preus Museum and OsloMet, based on her ongoing work from Palestine; Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity.
 
Alongside Habjouqa’s outdoor exhibition, the Project Space will screen all winning entries to Årets Bilde 2023 (Picture of the Year); the Press Photographers’ Club’s annual prize for the best in Norwegian photo and video journalism.  
 
Having spent 13 years in East Jerusalem with a husband and two Palestinian children, Tanya Habjouqa’s photographic eye has much in common with the Palestinian proverb “A distress makes you laugh, and a distress makes you cry,”  which was recited in her book “Occupied Pleasures”, which TIME Magazine mentioned as one of the best photo books in 2015.
 
With her unique perspective, she has mapped the physical and psychological boundaries that have defined Palestinian life during the occupation and up until the watershed on October 7. last year, when Gaza was hermetically closed to outside journalists. Habjouqa’s first solo exhibition in Norway, which is titled “Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity”, also includes photos taken on the West Bank in late November 2023 and includes excerpts from both “Occupied Pleasures” and the ongoing series “Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity”.  Both series trace the losses and victories that define Palestinian life; shattering confrontations, microscopic liberations, and the forging, holding, and remembering of space. She explores the tensions within and around landscapes and characters etched into the lives of the land’s occupied and occupying populations.
 

In connection with the opening weekend, Fotografihuset – in collaboration with Preus museum and OsloMet – organise the seminar “Images from Gaza: The Politics of Representation”.

In addition to contributions from Tanya Habjouqa and philosopher Arne Johan Vetlesen, there will be a dialogue between these two and, among others, political scientist Sylo Taraku; head of the research group MEKK (Media in War and Conflict) at OsloMet Kristin Skare Orgeret; social anthropologist, researcher, journalist, editor and author Anne Hege Simonsen; head of the Palestine Committee Line Khateeb and photo editor in the paper VG Espen Rasmussen.

March 13 – SEMINAR in collaboration with Preus Museum and OsloMet: «Images from Gaza: The Politics of Representation»,  17–19.30 in OsloMet’s auditorium Athene 1, Pilestredet 46, Clara Holst hus. Free entry.
 
EXHIBITION OPENING in collaboration with Preus Museum: Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity & Årets Bilde, 16 March, at 15.00 at Fotografihuset at Sukkerbiten.
 
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in Jordan and raised between Texas and the Middle East, award-winning journalist, artist, filmmaker and anthropologist Tanya Habjouqa (b. 1975) has become a leading advocate for innovation in photojournalism and documentary practice. With a mordant sense of irony fused with unstinting, forensic interrogations of the implications of geopolitical conflict on human lives, Habjouqa weaves narratives infused with folklore and dark humor. Trained in anthropology and journalism, with an MA in Global Media and emphasis on Middle Eastern politics, her work focuses on identity politics, occupation, dispossession, human rights and subcultures of the Levant.
 
She is the co-founder of Rawiya, the first female photography collective from the Middle East, and is a mentor in the Arab Documentary Program, providing marginalized narratives and narrative-creators with the space and skills to tell their stories. Her work is in the collections of the MFA Boston, the Institut du Monde Arab, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. She is a Nikon Europe Ambassador and advisor and teacher for the NOOR Foundation and the Nikon NOOR academy. Habjouqa is represented by the East Wing Gallery.

Summer Exhibition with Yelena Yemchuk & Mark Leckey

This summer’s exhibition brings together two art projects created several decades apart, yet sharing many similarities. Yelena Yemchuk’s visual ode to her childhood dream city, ...
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Summer Exhibition with Yelena Yemchuk & Mark Leckey

This summer’s exhibition brings together two art projects created several decades apart, yet sharing many similarities. Yelena Yemchuk’s visual ode to her childhood dream city, Odesa, photographed during a time of increasing waves of protests and attacks during Ukraine’s transition to war; and Mark Leckey’s iconic video montage ‘Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore’, which captures the UK’s underground club scene over three decades set against a backdrop of cultural, social, political, and economic unrest. Join us for the double exhibition opening on Thursday, June 5 at 6 PM!

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Nikita Teryoshin + Picture of the Year 2024

Every day on the news we are shown images of war and destruction. This coincides with global expenditure on arms increasing year after year. However, we are rarely afforded a glimpse behind the curtains of the global arms business. Nikita Teryoshin travelled to 16 arms fairs between 2016 and 2023 to investigate what happens before wars take place. ‘Nothing Personal’ shows the back office of war, which is the complete opposite of a battlefield: an oversized playground for adults with wine, finger foods and shiny weapons. Parallel to Teryoshin’s exhibition in the outdoor atrium, all winning categories of Årets Bilde 2024 (Picture of the Year Award) will be on display in the Project Space.

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What’s Ours – Finissage & artist talk Sunday March 9th at 2 pm

Myriam Boulos is coming to Oslo this weekend! We can’t wait to hear her in conversation with the formidable Rana Issa, as we mark the closing of the exhibition ‘What’s Ours’, which is closing this Sunday. The event is free and open to everyone—bring a friend or your entire 8th of March crew down to Sukkerbiten, see you Sunday at 2 PM!

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Fotografihuset is an outdoor gallery for camera-based art and moving image, exhibiting Norwegian and international photographers, artists and film makers.

Exhibitions

Nikita Teryoshin + Picture of the Year 2024

Every day on the news we are shown images of war and destruction. This coincides with global expenditure on arms increasing year after year. However, we are rarely afforded a glimpse behind the curtains of the global arms business. Nikita Teryoshin travelled to 16 arms fairs between 2016 and 2023 ...
READ MORE>

Summer Exhibition with Yelena Yemchuk & Mark Leckey

This summer’s exhibition brings together two art projects created several decades apart, yet sharing many similarities. Yelena Yemchuk’s visual ode to her childhood dream city, Odesa, photographed during a time of increasing waves of protests and attacks during Ukraine’s transition to war; and Mark Leckey’s iconic video montage 'Fiorucci Made ...
READ MORE>

The Summer Show: Helge Skodvin + Knut Egil Wang + Uncertain States Scandinavia

The banality and wildness of small-town life is depicted through tuja hedges, gossip mirrors and new Norwegian garden fauna when two of the country's most serious humorists in Norwegian photography exhibit together with Uncertain States Scandinavia. Welcome to the exhibition opening, artist talk and summer party on Thursday 6 June ...
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Myriam Boulos – What’s Ours

Myriam Boulos casts an unflinching eye on the revolution that began in Lebanon in 2019 with protests against government corruption and austerity—culminating with the aftermath of the devastating Beirut port explosion of August 2020. In her debut monograph "What's Ours", she portrays her friends and family with startling energy and ...
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The Shipping Forecast – Mark Power

Fotografihuset celebrates the arrival of autumn with Mark Power's photographic ode to the weather report that for decades has offered a lifeline for sailors and sleepless radio listeners across Europe. Exhibition opening Thursday 29 August at 6 pm.
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Artist talk and finissage: Tanja Habjouqa – Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity

Tanya Habjouqa/NOOR. Jordan Valley, Hamra, Occupied West Bank. Artist talk and finale: Tanya Habjouqa - Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity Since 16 March, thousands of visitors have been exposed to the photo exhibition "Birds Unaccustomed to Gravity". When the exhibition period is now coming to an end, Fotografihuset and Preus museum ...
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Sukkerbiten, Nylandsveien 28, 0150 Oslo

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