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john halaka

Meet the Artist

John Halaka is a Visual Artist, Documentary Filmmaker and Professor of Visual Arts at the University of San Diego, where he has taught since 1991.

As an activist artist, Halaka’s creative work serves as a vehicle for meditation on personal, cultural and political concerns. His drawings, paintings and documentary film projects are informed by the Palestinian experiences of displacement and the persistent desire of the refugees to reclaim their homes and homeland. “Through my work, I attempt to initiate a dialogue with the viewer that could hopefully instigate transformation, one person at a time.”Halaka has exhibited his artwork and screened his films regionally, nationally and internationally. John’s drawings from the series Landscapes of Desire were featured in a solo exhibition at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn Michigan, through January 2014. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship in 2011-2012 to develop the second phase of the project Portraits of Denial & Desire, in Lebanon. John received his MFA in the Visual Arts from the University of Houston in 1983, and his B.A. in Fine Arts from the City University of New York Baccalaureate Program, with Brooklyn College as home school. He is of Palestinian descent and was born in El Mansoura, Egypt, in 1957.

A selection of Halaka’s paintings and drawings can be viewed on his web site www.johnhalaka.com.

Information about his film projects and archives of video interviews can be found on his other web site: www.sittingcrowproductions.com.

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ART - MUSIC - CULTURE

Portraits of Denial and Desire

Photographs by John Halaka

21 March — 25 April 2014

Featured in:

Islamic Arts Magazine & Art Beat WAMU Radio

Opening Reception Talk:

john halaka abu ghazi

Portraits of Denial & Desire. “Abu Ghazi” Krayem Kanj. Nahr El Bared Refugee Camp. 2013. 20x30” digital print. ©John Halaka

“Indigenous Palestinians have faced an ongoing cultural genocide over the past 65 years and continue to experience a forced odyssey that has been characterized by repeated cycles of catastrophic displacement, debilitating deprivation, tenacious resistance and admirable resilience.

Palestinian refugees have become the forgotten survivors of the world. Their experiences in exile have been deliberately ignored and their voices repeatedly silenced. While Palestinians continue to be educed to an absence in their native homeland, the continuity of their stories and images ensures their presence and survival. Portraits of Denial & Desire is a multidisciplinary project that attempts to make the images and narratives of Palestinian refugees indelible, and their personal experiences in exile unforgettable."

John Halaka
January 2014.
www.Johnhalaka.com www.Sittingcrowproductions.com

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