Art in Dialogue: WE Love WIN

Performance by Anisa Ashkar
Followed by a conversation with Dr. Nissim Gal and Dr. Noa Avron Barak
Offered in partnership with the Berman Center for Jewish Studies

Join us for a newly created site-specific performance by Anisa Ashkar, a multidisciplinary artist who lives and works in Acre and Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel. Drawing on Ashkar’s lived experience of growing up, and continuing to live, in an industrial city shaped by steel based-labor, the performance brings her personal biography into dialogue with Bethlehem’s steel history and its lasting imprint on the Lehigh University campus. Performed in Arabic with simultaneous English translation, the work opens a space for reflection on how local landscapes shape individual lives and collective memory. The performance will be followed by a conversation between Ashkar, Nissim Gal and Noa Avron Barak discussing her art practice as both a global citizen and an Israeli of Palestinian origin.

Space is limited. Register in advance.

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Anisa Ashkar (born 1979) is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in performance, installation, photography, and painting. Residing in Acre and creating in Tel Aviv, Ashkar often draws from her personal biography while engaging with broader social and political transformations, creating spaces for critical discussion around the society we inhabit. As an artist, Ashkar seeks to challenge how individuals—especially women, Arabs, and artists—experience their existence within society at large and humanity in general. These focal points allow her to explore the ways in which the definition of femininity has been shaped across different societies, how feminine themes and materials are intertwined with sacred practices and rituals in religion, culture, and social institutions, and where these intersect with human belief systems and mythologies. Through her individual exploration of human emotional landscapes, Ashkar draws inspiration from abstraction. She creates rich oil paintings produced through pouring and irrational color stains, along with the use of unconventional materials such as tar and gold. Using a primary, intuitive approach to painting and employing a dominant color palette, she gives expression to human emotions as part of the journey one undergoes in life. In doing so, Ashkar often integrates stories from various mythologies into her works, emphasizing female figures or metaphorical creatures as explanations for past phenomena projected onto the present, in an attempt to return to the essence of existence. Performance art is another significant aspect of Ashkar’s body of work: the artist’s figure frequently appears alongside a male figure, with the dynamic between them serving as the basis for the performance. By combining various liquids such as milk or coffee, Ashkar uses her body and her face as canvases for her artistic expression. Through this, she incorporates elements from Muslim traditions as symbols of folk and social customs, both within Israeli and Arab societies. Her practice is deeply intertwined with personal, cultural, and political narratives, offering an open invitation to reconsider societal structures and challenge the norms that define the individual’s position within them. Ashkar’s work invites us to rethink the concept of the body as a site of resistance and transformation, using it as a vehicle for exploring the interconnections between myth, identity, and the forces that shape our shared reality.

https://www.anisaashkarart.com/

If you require assistance filling out this form, prefer to share your registration information via email or phone, or have questions, concerns, or any accessibility needs, please email Elise at ejs421@lehigh.edu or call 610-758-6882.

Art in Dialogue is a series of interdisciplinary conversations between members of the university and the wider community - reflecting the ways in which their work is dynamically engaged with other fields of inquiry.