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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.
Hanne's diary, from One day in history (2012). Photo: Andrea Gjestvang.

Between terror and everyday life

Andrea Gjestvang: One day in history. Opening Thursday 15.7.21 18. No registration. The audience is registered on the spot.

Andrea Gjestvang’s portrait series of survivors from the terrorist attack on AUF’s summer camp on Utøya on the 22nd of July 2011 is a classic in recent Norwegian photography. The portraits are simple and powerful, stripped of unnecessary effects. The young people are presented in everyday clothes and surroundings, many in their homes, some in nature or in institutions. Some bear clear scars from what happened, others only bear the memories.

One day in history was first presented in book form in 2012 and coincided with a flowering period for Norwegian documentary photography. A new generation of photographers accepted the criticism of the genre as objective truth, and reclaimed it as subjective expression. These photographs are not an “affirmation of reality,” as Susan Sontag once claimed. They are part of a process where the photographer, the young people and we, as viewers, create a common understanding of the incomprehensible.

One day in history has been shown in many places and won many awards. But the series has never before been shown as a separate exhibition in Norway. When it is shown at Sukkerbiten, in the middle of Oslo’s busiest urban area, it becomes part of an urban landscape and helps to give the Utøya generation a central place in the Norwegian public.

In connection with the exhibition, a seminar will be organized on Thursday the 19th of August. More information to come.

Curator: Jonas Ekeberg.
Opening: Thursday the 15th of July at 18.00. Speech by Jonas Ekeberg, artistic and general manager, Andrea Gjestvang, photographer and Ylva Schwenke, portrait. The exhibition will be opened by Agnes Viljugrein, local politician from the Labor Party and board member of AUF.
Exhibition period: 15/7 – 3/10.

Cathrine (17) from One day in history (2012). Photo: Andrea Gjestvang.

Contact

Visiting address:
Sukkerbiten, Nylandsveien 28, 0150 Oslo

Postal address:
Postboks 3303 Sørenga, 0140 Oslo

E-mail:post@fotografihuset.no

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