Tania El Khoury

Primary Academic Program: Theater and Performance

Biography:

Tania El Khoury’s work focuses on audience interactivity and is concerned with the ethical and political potential of such encounters. She creates installations and performances in which the audience is an active collaborator. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and shown in 32 countries across six continents in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is the recipient of the Soros Art Fellowship (2019); Bessie Award for Outstanding Production (2019); International Live Art Prize (2017); GOOD 100, GOOD magazine’s list of people from around the globe who are improving the world; Total Theatre Innovation Award (2011), and Arches Brick Award (2011). She is also the recipient of grants from, among others, the British Council, Arts Council England, and Arab Fund for Arts and Culture; and residencies at Campbelltown Arts Centre in Australia, Spielart Festival in Munich, Fierce Festival in Birmingham, Long Island’s Watermill Center, and BankArt Gallery in Yokohama. El Khoury is associated with Forest Fringe, a collective of artists in the United Kingdom, and cofounder of Dictaphone Group in Lebanon, a live art and urban research collective. In 2019, she co-curated the 2019 edition of the Live Arts Bard Biennial at the Fisher Center; Where No Wall Remains: An International Festival about Borders included nine newly commissioned projects by artists from the Middle East and the Americas. Other recent works include As Far As My Fingertips Take Me, an encounter between an audience member and a refugee, commissioned by LIFT 2016 in partnership with the Royal Court Theatre and presented in 33 cities around the world; Gardens Speak (2014), an interactive sound installation presented in Melbourne, Edinburgh, Bucharest, Munich, Washington, D.C., and other cities; and Maybe If You Choreograph Me, You Will Feel Better, a performance piece commissioned by Battersea Arts Centre in London and presented in Vienna, Toronto, and Ljubljana, among other places. Her performance and installation work, and curating projects have also been internationally presented from Yokohama, Japan, to Santiago, Chile. Her publications include Gardens Speak, published by Tadween Publishing; “Camp Pause: Stories from Rashidieh Camp and the Sea,” in Jadaliyya; “Performing the Arab,” in Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research; “The Scenography of The Revolution,” “Two Live Artists in the Theatre” and “Swimming in Sewage, Political Performances in the Mediterranean,” in Performance Research; and “We Are All Witnesses: The Arab Spring in Photos and Electronic Wars” and “Spaces and Bodies in Arab Revolutionary Art,” in Journal of Palestine Studies.

BA, Institute of Fine Arts, Lebanese University; postgraduate certificate, School of Physical Theatre, London; MA, Goldsmiths, University of London; PhD, Royal Holloway, University of London. At Bard: 2019; 2020– .

Contact:

Website: https://taniaelkhoury.com
Email: