Biography
Ali Jabri was a critical chronicler of the everyday with a passion for archaeology and cultural heritage. His formative years coincided with the fertile period of Arab nationalism from the 1940s to the 1970s, which is deeply engrained in the spirit and subject matter of his work. At the same time, Jabri’s practice drew profoundly from common interactions, captured in what the artist called ‘city kitsches’. Combining pastel drawings, newspaper clippings, collage and text, his daily reflections filled many journals.
Jabri received his early education at Victoria College, Cairo in the 1950s and moved to California in the 1960s, where he studied architecture at Stanford University. He later took up English literature at Bristol University, UK and returned to the Middle East in 1977, living and working first in Cairo and then settling in Amman, where he spent the rest of his life.
His work has been shown in two Sharjah Art Foundation exhibitions: Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017) and Disorientation II: The Rise and Fall of Arab Cities, Abu Dhabi (2009), which was a collaboration between Sharjah Art Foundation and Abu Dhabi Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC). He was awarded a special Sharjah Biennial Prize (2017) posthumously to further the conservation of his work.
Jabri was born in Jerusalem in 1943 and died in Amman in 2002.
This person was part of Sharjah Biennial 13 and the exhibition Disorientation II: The Rise and Fall of Arab Cities (2009). He received a special Sharjah Biennial Prize (2017).