Tania El Khoury

Distinguished Artist in Residence, Theater and Performance; Director, Center for Human Rights and the Arts

Academic Program Affiliation(s): Human Rights, Theater and Performance

Biography: Tania El Khoury is an artist who creates interactive installations and performances that reflect on the production of collective memory and the cultivation of solidarity. Her work is activated by tactile, auditory, and visual materials collected and curated by the artist and her collaborators, which are ultimately transformed through audience interaction. El Khoury’s work engages questions of displacement, border systems, privatization, and the politics of space, exploring how they are shaped through nation-building projects and colonial legacies. Her work has been translated into multiple languages and shown in 33 countries across six continents in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is the recipient of the Herb Alpert Award (2023); 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 is cofounder of Dictaphone Group in Lebanon, a live art and urban research collective. She cocurated Tashweesh, a festival on feminist practices in Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Europe, taking place across the three cities of Tunis, Brussels, and Vienna in 2022.

She also cocurated the 2023 edition of Live Arts Bard at the Fisher Center, Common Ground: An International Festival on the Politics of Land and Food, and the 2019 edition, Where No Wall Remains: An International Festival about Borders. Recent artworks include Memory of Birds (2023); Cultural Exchange Rate (2019); The Search for Power (2018); As Far As My Fingertips Take Me (2016); Gardens Speak (2014), and others.

Her publications include The Search for Power (2020) and Gardens Speak (2016), both 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 Contested 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– .
Website: https://taniaelkhoury.com
Email:
Location: Center for Civic Engagement - Barringer House
Office: Hegeman 301