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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.
Jonas Ekeberg. Photo: Ane Hjort Guttu.

Jonas Ekeberg becomes artistic director of Fotografihuset

Fotografihuset AS has engaged Jonas Ekeberg as artistic director.

Ekeberg (born 1967) will have overall responsibility for Fotografihuset’s artistic profile. He will develop the project’s artistic vision, and ensure the quality and professional standard of the exhibitions and the dissemination program in general. Ekeberg starts in the position 1st of February 2020. He will be responsible for the artistic program at Sukkerbiten in Bjørvika in Oslo in 2020 and beyond until the opening of the new Fotografihuset at the same location in 2023.

– Photography has a central role in art and in society, and it is high time we got an ambitious international exhibition venue for photography in Oslo. My most important task will be to combine a high academic standard with a program that has broad appeal. It’s a fantastically interesting challenge that I’m looking forward to taking on, says Jonas Ekeberg.

Ekeberg comes from the position of editor for the Nordic online magazine Kunstkritikk, and was previously director of the Preus Museum – the national museum for photography. He has broad experience from Norwegian art and culture and has, among other things, been the founder of Oslo Kunsthall, chief curator of Momentum – Nordic biennale for contemporary art in Moss and curator at the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA).

Ekeberg is a trained photographer at the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Design, Bergen (1993) and the University of Photography and Film in Gothenburg (1997).

– We are very happy to have had such a competent and experienced artistic director as Jonas Ekeberg. He has been a strong contributor to developing the entire field of photography in Norway and the Nordics, and will have a key role in placing Fotografihuset at a high international level, says Fotografihuset chairman Hans Abrahamsen.

For more information, contact:
Jonas Ekeberg, incoming artistic director, jonas.ekeberg@pobox.com, 41505202
Erling Johansen, general manager of Fotografihuset,erling@fotografihuset.no, 47172216

Fotografihuset AS was established in 2014 with the aim of establishing a center for photography in Oslo. With a unanimous decision in the city council in February 2015, Oslo municipality backed the initiative. Fotografihuset has entered into an agreement of intent with Hav eiendom regarding establishment at Sukkerbiten and Bjørvikaustikkeren. The opening is planned for 2023

Contact

Visiting address:
Sukkerbiten, Nylandsveien 28, 0150 Oslo

Postal address:
Postboks 3303 Sørenga, 0140 Oslo

E-mail:post@fotografihuset.no

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