Sama Alshaibi's (b. 1973, Iraq) photographs and videos situate her own body as a site of performance, considering the social and gendered impacts of war and migration. Her work complicates the coding of the Arab female figure found in the image history of photographs and moving images. Alshaibi’s sculptural installations evoke the body's disappearance and act as counter-memorials to war and forced exile. Alshaibi’s monograph, Sand Rushes In, was published by Aperture, NYC. It features her 8-year Silsila series (which debuted at the 55th Venice Biennale), which probes the human dimensions of borders, migration, and ecological demise.

Alshaibi is a Guggenheim Fellow, the 2023 Art Matters Betty Parsons Fellow, and the 2021 Phoenix Art Museum's Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award recipient. She has been featured in several biennials, including the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (Italy), the 21st International Art Biennial of Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia, 2020), the 13th Cairo International Biennale (Egypt, 2019), the 2017 Honolulu Biennial (Hawaii), the 2016 Qalandia International Biennial (Haifa), and FotoFest Biennial, Houston (2014). She was also selected as one of 60 artists for the ‘State of The Art 2020’ (Crystal Bridges Museum of Art/the Momentary, Arkansas, 2020) and recently held solo exhibitions at Maraya Art Centre (Sharjah, 2023), Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix, 2022), Ayyam Gallery (Dubai, 2019) and at Artpace, where she participated as the National Artist in Residence (San Antonio, 2019). Alshaibi received the first-prize Project Development Award from the Center (Santa Fe, 2019), the 2018 Artist Grant from the Arizona Commission on The Arts, and the 2017 Visual Arts Grant from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (Beirut). She was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholar Fellowship in 2014-2015 as part of a year-long residency at the Palestine Museum in Ramallah, where she developed an education program while conducting independent research.

Other solo exhibitions include the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, NY (2017); the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, AZ (2016); Ayyam Gallery, Dubai (2015); Ayyam Gallery, London (2015); Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai (2011) and Selma Feriani Gallery, London (2010). Her over 150 group exhibitions include Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, 2023), The Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2023), Currier Museum of Art (Manchester, 2022), Pen + Brush Gallery (NYC, 2019), American University Museum (Washington D.C., 2018), Breda Photo Festival (Netherlands, 2018), Marta Herford Museum of Art (Germany, 2017), CCS Bard Hessel Museum and Galleries (NYC, 2017), Museum De Wieger (The Netherlands, 2017), Palais De La Culture Constantine (Algeria, 2015), Arab American National Museum (MI, 2015), MoMA (NYC, 2012), and Institut Du Monde Arabe (Paris, 2012). Her over 40 video artworks and films have been screened in numerous festivals internationally, including Mapping Subjectivity, MoMA (NYC), 24th Instants Video Festival (Mexico and France), Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Greece) and DOKUFEST (Kosovo). Her art residencies include Anderson Ranch Art Center (Snowmass), Artpace International Artist Residency (San Antonio), Darat al Funun (Amman), A.M. Qattan Foundation (Ramallah), and Lightwork (NY). Alshaibi's works have been collected by public institutions internationally, including the Center for Creative Photography (Tuscon), the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell (NY), The Houston Museum of Art (Texas), Montclair Art Museum (NJ), Nadour (Germany), the Barjeel Collection (Sharjah), En Foco (NYC), and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Tunis (Tunisia).

Born in Basra to an Iraqi father and Palestinian mother, Sama Alshaibi is based in the United States, where she is a Regents Professor of Photography, Video, and Imaging at the University of Arizona, Tucson. She holds a BA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago and an MFA in Photography, Video, and Media Arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder.