Birthright
Birthright is the artist's visual objection towards the world's denial of Palestinian humanity. The project is also based on narratives of Alshaibi's mother’s family's forced migration from Palestine to Iraq, and then to America, and culminates with her own "return" to Occupied Palestine that as a refugee, she has no rights of a permanent return to. The work forms a discourse that complicates accepted and official history. As witnesses to history, Alshaibi's family's memories act as a personal testimony that objects to the effacement of events that have shaped geography and modern-day politics. Birthright, based on her family's exile, uses the body as a symbol, the retrospective witness that links the present to a time before they were refugees, exiles, and labeled "terrorists". The quintessential woman, the pregnant mother, performs the injustices, defying all attempts to obliterate the Palestinian history and who they collectively are.
Digital Archival Print at 29.5 x 23 in. each, 2004-2005
In My Country's Embrace
Target Practice
Worthless Possession
Abu Ammar RIP
Portrait of the Disinherited
Witness
Ijtihad
Handala
The Weight
Olives From Gaza: the bitter dream