Taylor, Woodman (2020). Sama Alshaibi: Reorienting Our Gaze. Tribe, 10
Through exposing her own subjectivity, both in terms of her multiple points-of-view as an Iraqi-Palestinian woman practicing in the United States but also in her enactments as the subject in her own image-based work, Sama Alshaibi aims to reorient her audiences’ gaze. Born in Basra, raised in West Asia and educated in the arts first at Columbia College in Chicago and then at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Alshaibi has negotiated her identity across divergent cultural and national constructs. This familiarity with both sides of the usual East / West dichotomy allows Alshaibi to visually critique, up-end and then reconfigure the mostly male-centered and Orientalist framings of West Asia and particularly of Arab women. By literally taking ownership of the image through her own body, while arranging the setting and framing of her photographs and videos, Alshaibi becomes an activist advocating for a reorientation of her viewers’ gaze while creating new resonance generated through images of her staged performances.
