Qais Assali is an artist, designer and educator based in Chicago and Houston and raised in Palestine and the UAE. His interdisciplinary art practice engages with issues of time and...
Qais Assali is an artist, designer and educator based in Chicago and Houston and raised in Palestine and the UAE. His interdisciplinary art practice engages with issues of time and memory, collective trauma, and diaspora related to current events and his own identity. This special video excerpt for Art in Isolation includes an embodiment of Palestinian educator and Arab nationalist, Khalil Al Sakakini, who wrote his diaries since 1907. ‘Am I so desperate, Khalil Al Sakakini, to out your dead body, to drag you out of the closet or the grave?’ This personal question plagues my research during my shelter-in-place time, simulating a desire to read Al Sakakini's lamentations for his “soulmate”, Dawoud, borrowing poetic biblical language, redubbing and conflating his dear friend “David” as Jonathan, who died during Al Sakakini’s one year trip to Brooklyn through an economic depression. This video was made in cooperation with the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit through “People in Archive” project, summer 2020.
Assali received a BFA in Contemporary Visual Art from the International Academy of Art Palestine (2017) before continuing on to receive two master’s degrees, a MFA from Bard College, NY and a MA in Art Education from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2018). He has lectured internationally, and was recently the Visiting Assistant Professor for the Critical Race Studies Residency Program at Michigan State University (2018-19). He is currently a Fellow and Artist-in-Residence for the Core Residency Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. His work has been included in solo and group exhibitions internationally at institutions including the Chicago Cultural Center; Rashid Diab Arts Centre, Khartoum; SculptureCenter, New York, Jeune Création, Paris; and Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo.