At 88, she has won a Munch award for artistic freedom – despite her pioneering work being cancelled by the US university she studied at. She talks protest, polarisation and propaganda
It’s a miracle I get out of my interview with Palestinian artist Samia Halaby alive. Not just because the creaky wooden stairs to her second-floor Tribeca, New York live-work space are alarmingly steep, but because certain people view the 88-year-old acclaimed abstract artist, a pioneer of digital art, as a dangerous security threat.
In December 2023, Indiana University, Halaby’s alma mater, cancelled what was due to be the first American retrospective exhibition of Halaby’s work at the university’s Eskenazi Museum of Art. The exhibition had been three years in the making but Halaby was informed she was no longer welcome in a terse two-sentence letter from the museum’s director, citing vague security concerns. The real reason, she suspects, was the museum’s wish to distance itself from anything supportive of Palestine in the wake of 7 October. Almost a year later, says Halaby, Michigan State University abruptly cancelled the opening party for her solo retrospective and removed a painting whose title, Six Golden Heroes, referred to the escape of Palestinian political prisoners.
