Izdihar Afyouni (b. 1994) is a Palestinian-Jordanian multidisciplinary artist and independent curator with a background in academic figurative painting. She works with large-format painting, sculpture, text, video and immersive theatre/performance. Her painting practice concerns itself with making the work of art a site of continued performance, a torturous self-examination, that has no resolution but a continuing consequence. It is concerned with political notions of the body and seeks to weave together multiple narrative threads that question the role of the author and interrogates the conscious and subconscious political influence of Judeo-Christian iconography in contemporary visual culture by re-examining them through a queer, decolonized lense. That site of awareness is a space of bourgeois commodification, the art market. Her large-format paintings seek to transform the spectator into a part of the work of art, making the survival of the form transmogrify and queer the process of experiencing art. Given the fact that where her artwork is most pointedly focused, the Levantine’s conservative and colonial and imperial governance, her queer practice has come to target her. She was recently awarded an Exceptional Talent visa by the UK Arts Council allowing her to continue her practice in the UK.
Her curatorial practice is concerned with making the usually unpublicized workings of government public by queering bodily subjectivity, the erotics of violence and the biosurveillant measures of weeding out genetic and undesirable threats to the state. She is the creator and curator of the ongoing research project and immersive exhibition series Thicker Than Blood, which extends the extractive form of governmental subjection and surveillance of the body to its non-necessary human form, namely, its test sample.She holds an MFA from Goldsmiths, University of London, where her research was focused on the ethical and psychological implication of racial profiling policies. She also works collaboratively with other artists and academics, and creates work under a pseudonym. She has exhibited in Germany, Jordan, Palestine, UK and Brazil. She currently lives and works in London, UK.
Bibliography
Thicker than Blood: How Participatory Art can Expose and Subvert Biopower
https://moed.online/thicker-than-blood-participatory-art-expose-subvert-biopower/
Hammam Radio هلاك وإستهلاك: Biopolitics & Art Interview January 2021 with NAada Akl
https://soundcloud.com/hammam-radio/biopolitics-art
HYPERALLERGIC interview
https://hyperallergic.com/466160/izdihar-afyouni/
ARTIST-ON-ARTIST with JESSICA WORDEN for CUNTEMPORARY
Analysis of Thicker Than Blood in Elena Ascione’s MA thesis (Utrecht University)
Live Art Write Up
http://contemporarylynx.co.uk/are-you-sitting-comfortably-the-disturbing-magic-of-live-art
Interview of one of the attendees of THICKER THAN BLOOD by MINICLICK PHOTO TALKS
https://miniclick.co.uk/2018/11/21/review-izdihar-afyouni-thicker-than-blood/
BRIDGES NOT BORDERS
https://basementapproved.com/culture/the-basement-presents-bridges-not-borders/
Interview with academic Nadia Akl on THICKER THAN BLOOD
Exhibitions etc.
Modern Panic X Truman Brewery, Shoreditch, London. UK Exhibiting Artist (painting), Live Art & sound performance (To Everyone I Have Ever Hurt)
Natural Selection: International Queer Artists in Residence Gallery Lock In, Brighton, United Kingdom Co-curator, exhibiting artist (painting), durational live art performance (Stratospheric Efflux Therapy)
Pilotenkueche /International Artist Residency Leipzig, Germany Artist-in-Residence Heal Turn Vat/ Solo performance with audience participation
Wrestling with Impermanence/ Pilotenkueche Group Show Pilotenkueche , Leipzig, Germany
Elsewhere a Blue Line Group Show Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig, Germany
Queer Migrant Takeover: Deeper Routes Rich Mix, London, UK Performance Lecture and Installation
COMMUNE: Art & Sustainability Old Baths, Hackney Wick, London, UK Exhibiting Artist
Artist Lecture: Deterritorializing Participatory Performance. Anarchist Studies Network 5th International Conference, Loughborough University, UK.
Thinking Flesh Group Exhibition Centrala , Birmingham, UK Performance and Sound Installation (Jailhouse Mentality)
The Resistance: Performance Evening Yukunkun, Beirut, Lebanon Live Art Performance and Sound Installation
Contemporary Responses to Biosurveillance in ME SIP, Beirut, Lebanon Series of artist talks, lectures and supplementary reading group curated by Izdihar Afyouni
Thicker Than Blood II: Consequence The Flying Dutchman, London, UK Curator, Exhibiting Artist,
Casa Na Ilha Art Residency Ilhabella, Brazil Artist in Residence
Thicker Than Blood The Flying Dutchman, London, UK Curator, Exhibiting Artist
Multitudes: Arabic Women Artists Now Rich Mix, London, UK Exhibiting Artist, Artist Talk
AD/HACK Various location, Jenin, Palestine Assistant Curator, Exhibiting Artist
BA Fine Art Painting Degree Show University of Brighton, UK Exhibiting Artist
For a full CV please request one via the contact page.