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Diana Al-Halabi

video, schrijven, schilderen, Lichaam, internationaal, installatie, Gender, Figuratief, Dekolonisatie, Autobiografisch, Audiovisueel, Artistiek onderzoek

As an interdisciplinary artist, my practice is rooted in research-based methodologies that unfold across painting, film, text, installation, and performance. Working at the intersection of the personal and the political, I often employ autoethnography to investigate how lived experience can expose broader structures of power. In recent years, I have approached my work through an intersectional feminist lens, engaging critically with top-down systems of control—from the patriarchal gaze and institutional violence to bureaucracy, settler colonialism, migration, and the politicization of the digestive system. My projects seek to destabilize dominant narratives by re-centering silenced histories and embodied resistance. One of my recent works, Famine and Hunger Strikes: Decolonizing the Digestive System, examines the digestive system as a political battleground: a last resort for bottom-up resistance, and a site used by states to subordinate people through siege and forced starvation. My films operate in the experimental space between cinema and visual art, merging visual research, language experimentation, and political critique. This hybrid approach led to the creation of The Battle of Empty Stomachs, a film exploring hunger and forced migration. Supported by the IFFR RTM Pitch Award, the film screened at multiple international film festivals and museums. In 2022, two years after the Beirut port explosion, I developed a project that bridges the ports of Beirut and Rotterdam. It addressed the precarity faced by Beirut's port workers and the emotional weight of witnessing crisis from a distance—while living in another port city shaped by neoliberal infrastructures. Drawing from family oral histories and the psycho-social aftermath of political violence in Lebanon, my work attempts to trace the origins of normalized injustices embedded in everyday life.

Clean Cut
Clean Cut - Acrylic on Canvas | 120x180cm | 2024 In her films, installations, and paintings, artist Diana Al-Halabi (1990) critically reflects on power structures. One of the works Al-Halabi is showing at Prospects is the painting Clean Cut (2024). It shows a butcher washing his hands while his customers - painted in cool hues, are closely monitoring him from the left. To his right, in a warmer colour palette, are the animals he butchered: human bodies. Al-Halabi painted this scene after a photograph of Gaza, with the bodies of murdered people lying in the streets. Just like in her painting, a cat was sitting on top of one of these bodies. It was unclear whether this cat was mourning, trying to warm the body, or just looking for food. By reinterpreting this horrifying image in her painting and using the butcher to link the dead bodies to his customers, Al-Halabi is commenting on how the West is dealing with the genocide in Palestine. She depicts the hypocrisy that, in her view, shapes everyday reality: people do not want to see violence and pretend that a certain hygiene - and with it, civility - is important. In reality, however, violence is accepted as long as it happens at a distance. "That is the double standard the civilized nations adhere to," Al-Halabi says. This work is a visual representation of white innocence, a concept coined by the anthropologist Gloria Wekker, referring to the denial of racism and colonialism by white people. At the same time, Al-Halabi also falls back on Bertolt Brecht's Fünf Schwierigkeiten beim Schreiben der Wahrheit (1935). Much like the famous author attempted in this work, Al-Halabi is challenging the spectator to relate to uncomfortable truths.
Chewing with Political Teeth
Chewing with Political Teeth - Constituting two sides of the same coin, famine and hunger strikes render the digestive system another political site of struggle. While famines are a top-down force often engineered by governments to subordinate their people, hunger strikes are a bottom-up form of individual resistance often undertaken by political prisoners as a last resort for claiming their rights. The question of preservation is foregrounded in this piece, feeding into the notion of food security, the domestic, the public, and the political. Who is able to preserve food beyond its season? Why do we preserve food? Is preservation a result of surplus or is preservation a fear-taming method? Informed by Lebanon's long-standing practice of mulberry farming, this piece uses mulberry fruit leather as a means of memorializing the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon. Prior to the famine (1915-1918), mulberry trees covered 80% of Mount Lebanon’s terraces, which resulted in the emergence of monoculture silk farming and the accumulation of increasing debt on the part of peasants seeking to keep up with the capitalist trade of silk in Europe, particularly in France. Due to the lack of cultivation of other crops (e.g. lentils and burghul), the blockade imposed by Allied forces during WWI resulted in a famine that killed more than 200,000 people. For the next twenty years, post-famine Lebanon was placed under the French Mandate. Criticizing the omnipresent notion in the West that famines are a thing of the past, this project provides a visual translation of the direct and indirect relationship between politics and war, on the one hand, and the digestive system, on the other. With the ongoing famine in Yemen (circa 2016), increasing effects of climate change, a neocolonial strategy of sanctions whose only victims are peoples (instead of governments) across the Global South, and the current outcome of Russia’s war against Ukraine (inflation and insufficient global supply of wheat in particular) we are witnessing the crucial role that food security will play in both the present and the future.
The Politics of the Armed Lifeboat
The Politics of the Armed Lifeboat - When thinking of food, it is often the case to think about appetite, degree of physiological hunger, kitchens, and a choice of food that is affordable to eat. A constellation of the psychological, the physiological, and the economic. But is the political considered to be a part of this constellation? Can we look through food, beyond the reductional micro of the biological, and towards a macro image of the political use of food? And arrive at the notion of political hunger, its precondition, and its aftermath. How can food be weaponized against people to subordinate them or ethnically cleanse them? How can famine inflicted by war, neo-colonial sanctions, or caused by climate change be a precondition to migration and thus affect its policy in Europe? In my approach to the topic of political hunger, I have been working on the juxtaposition between famine and hunger strikes; one that comes from states, subordinating people in a top-down manner (famine), and another that uses hunger individually or collectively, but as a bottom-up resistance to fight for a right (hunger strikes). In previous exhibitions, I used the concept of aprons made of mulberry fruit leather to speak about the question of preservation, food security, the domestic, the public, and the political. Who can preserve food beyond its season? Why preserve food? Is preservation a result of a surplus or a fear-taming method of protection? Aprons, a domestic element used for protection against accidental stains, in this exhibition, mirror kinds of protection that surpass the domestic. What shapes does protection take when adopted by states and its apparatuses? Is it by creating borders? Migration policies? Systematic violence? Counterinsurgency techniques and ballistic shields? This exhibition departs from these concepts and intersectionally relates the personal and the digestive to geo and necropolitics.
The Battle of Empty Stomachs
The Battle of Empty Stomachs - FILM | 23' | 2024 | EXPERIMENTAL Synopsis Based on research and interviews with both Palestinian hunger strikers and asylum seekers, this absurdist yet realist film stages a dialogue between the director and her mother tongue that centers on a single question: what do we know about hunger? This film is a poetic and musical tribute to those who suffered the aftermath of famine and migration, and to Palestinian hunger strikers whose resistance outlives the deafening silence of the colonial world.
The Disaster Cannot be Contained
The Disaster Cannot be Contained - FILM | 26'46" | DOCUMENTARY | 2022 Synopsis Departing from the port of Rotterdam to that of Beirut, the Lebanese artist/filmmaker takes us on a journey through her feminist dream to work on a tugboat in the port of Beirut. A passion for ports and ships turns into a generational trauma due to the aftermath of the port Blast in 2020. The film offers an intersectional narrative and brings together questions of loss, distance, death, and the undead.
Blow Up
Blow Up - Acrylic on Canvas | Triptych (left panel) 45x45, (center panel) 50x50, (right panel) 45x45 | 2025 (exhibited at PROSPECT 2025)
The Last Supper or a Class In History - A performance responding to the Palestinian artist Jumana Manna's film Wild Relatives which unfolds a matrix of plant lives, peasants' lives, and seed banks. Following a trip of seeds from Aleppo to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, back to Lebanon, and finally back to the Arctic. "The Last Supper or a Class In History" performance was part of the program "To Carry The Sun" curated by Narges Mohammadi for IDFA Film Festival | 2021 for the full video documentation of this performance please contact the artist.
Delivered Home With No Eye Contact - Paintings based on screenshots of video calls with family and friends back in Beirut, these paintings were exhibited in the Growing Space Rotterdam
The Portrait Of My Father - 8 pictures collected from the internet and printed on A4 papers. 2020 “The Portrait of my Father”; 8 pictures printed on A4 papers. 2020 Can a portrait of a particular father be made with images of commonality? Would it then be less exclusive or less personal for audience, yet still puts the viewer in the singular specific element of the phallic for example? In the attempt to blow up the scale of patriarchy from the domestic to the social, from the father figure in a nuclear family to the common dictator of a society, I used images of omnipresent products collected from the internet, to portrait one specific personality very personal to me which is my father.
I Have Measured Your Body With Mine - Double sided painting Acrylic on transparent plastic 120x180cm, 2021
Aspect Ratio - Still shot from “Aspect Ratio” – video, 2’09” | 2020 In this video, I have compared the scale of a dictator “Saddam Hussein” with my scale. “Saddam Hussein” who was the former dictator of Iraq has been the fascination of my father, who in turn was about to name me after him if my biological gender has allowed it. I placed Saddam in a 35x45mm / 50x50mm photo size (the standard bureaucratic size for American and Schengen visa). Thus attempting in a minimal gesture with a feminist persistence to scale down patriarchy from its ultimate form of dictator’s monuments to a passport size pictures, trying to equalize power to a horizontal relation instead of a vertical one.
“Your Guide to Taking Back (Temporarily) What We Have Taken From You (Permanently) ” - digital downloadable work | (part of Print& Play exhibition) | 2021
The Visa Regime Banner - Ink on an outdoor banner, a collaboration with Afrang Nordlöf Malekian, (part of open studios at PZI) | 2021 The banner “If a curfew violates freedom of movement, so does the visa regime.” placed on the emergency exit of Piet Zwart Institute, is a protest against the silence of European authorities towards the long-lasting curfew so-called the visa regime. This statement is a response to the current events taking place in the Netherlands and beyond, where a male-dominant discourse is critiquing the temporary curfew as a “violation of freedom of movement”. If violated, what different meanings could “freedom of movement” have depending on whose mobility is affected? This question was the point of departure of this project. In the current Covid-19 pandemic, the government of the Netherlands has taken different measures to limit the spread of the Coronavirus. One of them is a curfew. When implemented, riots stormed the streets for a few nights. The debate went into court and initially, the Hague District Court called the curfew a “far-reaching violation of the right to freedom of movement and privacy”. Only a few, mostly right-wing groups in the Netherlands, have addressed their opposition to the curfew as a violation of freedom of movement. Those are the same groups that usually push nationalistic agendas, reinforce strict Schengen visa regulations, and vote against facilitating easy access to migrants and refugees fleeing war and economic hardships. The double standard of what freedom of movement means, makes us intrigued to ask, what does the European border regime do to freedom of movement when it fortifies its borders and treats newcomers as the “other” who is only welcomed if it serves as a commodity in a capitalistic society? Diana Al-Halabi and Afrang Nordlöf Malekian
Holding Palestine - 7 days performance, May 2021 In May 2021, students of Piet Zwart Institute – which is managed under WDKA and Hogeschool Rotterdam – were faced with silencing and censoring, as they hung a banner in solidarity with Palestine. This Banner which was initiated by students among them Christian Ovesen, Emma Astner, and Diana Al-Halabi, was taken down by the security guards of Hogeschool Rotterdam, Students gathered to take further actions against the neutral stance of the school, among those actions was: - a statement against the censoring of freedom of speech and the neutral stance of the school especially when it comes to Palestine, this statement announced the student's decision to hang the banner again, - a student protest that marched from Erasmus University, passing by WDKA and ending up in Piet Zwart Institute. - An Alternative working Assembly was collaboratively planned with some tutors from WDKA against the closed meeting that the school invited students to in order to discuss the recent events. Many other actions were taken on an individual level, like radio shows, hanging Palestinian flags from the windows of the studios, etc. The school policing became so excessive, security guards kept visiting the campus building on an hourly basis. Weeks of back and forth confrontations, students such as Christian Ovesen and Emma Astner decided to use the watermelon symbol of the Palestinian flag in order to hang another banner. The banner was taken down one hour later. The reason was: Nothing is allowed to hang from the building. I initiated the "Holding Palestine" performance in response to the school's reasoning of "nothing is allowed to be hung". This 7 days performance, invited artists, tutors, and supporters to come to hold the banner in rotation: every two artists held the banner for an hour, 10 hours a day, for 7 days. Reading broadcastings, discussions, podcasts were organically held on the stairs. For further documentation of this performance and the events that happened in May 2021, visit the Instagram account of
The Official Apology Of Hogeschool Rotterdam - A wall text, vinyl cut-out letters on white wood. 210x180cm -After censoring students for being vocal about their stance in solidarity with Palestine, This work imagines an alternative reality of the Hogeschool Rotterdam response. A curatorial text hijacked and written by Diana Al-Halabi in the graduation of MFA at Piet Zwart Institute.
On Scales of Violence: How to Measure A Dictator? [Interrupted] - still shot from video installation, 12’19”, (Part of the graduation project at PZI) | 2021 For further viewing please contact the artist. This film relies on an intersectional feminist autoethnographic research, demonstrating how through 90s TV broadcast news, dictators leaked out of the TV and affected vertically the Patriarchal gaze in family units. The film gets interrupted in the process of its making by the violence that erupted in Palestine in May 2021, in which the Israeli Settler Colonial state was forcibly displacing Palestinians out of their homes in Shiekh Jarrah, Silwan, Beita and Lifta, as it did for 7 decades. Palestinians revolted, which resulted in 11 days war on Gaza that killed 243 civilians among them 67 children. The film changes its course, as students in the Dutch art institute “Piet Zwart Institute” voice their stance in Solidarity with Palestine and gets censored and silenced by the institution.

Roffa Mon Amour + Theater Rotterdam

Datum:
Locatie: Theater Rotterdam

Theater Rotterdam loves cinema just like us! Especially when created by local talents. Every month we present a Short Film. From Friday January 10 to Sunday January 12, we’re going to present The Battle of Empty Stomachs (2023) by Diana Al-Halabi, a film researching harrowing hunger strikes undertaken by Palestinian prisoners. On January 10 at 19:20, we’re having a talk with Diana, moderated by Amira Gad.

https://roffamonamour.com/screenings/the-battle-of-empty-stomachs/

2025 Something Else Symposium – Darb1718, Cairo

Datum:
Locatie: Darb1718

Screening of my film, The Battle of Empty Stomachs, and two of my paintings. Curated by Angels Miralda

Tashweesh Festival

Datum:
Locatie: Beursschouwberg

The Battle of Empty Stomachs
23min, 2024, The Netherlands

Based on research and interviews with both Palestinian hunger strikers and asylum seekers, this absurd yet realistic film stages a dialogue between the director and her mother tongue, with a central question: what do we know about hunger?

https://www.beursschouwburg.be/en/events/tashweesh-24/cinema/

Screening the Battle of Empty Stomachs at Black Star Film Festival

Datum:
Locatie: Black Star Film Festival

Based on research and interviews with both Palestinian hunger strikers and asylum seekers, this absurdist yet realist film stages a dialogue between the director and her mother tongue that centers on a single question: What do we know about hunger?

This film is a poetic and musical tribute to those who suffered the aftermath of famine and migration, and to Palestinian hunger strikers whose resistance outlives the deafening silence of the colonial world.

https://www.blackstarfest.org/festival/films/the-battle-of-empty-stomachs/

Wild Summer

Datum:
Locatie: Brutus

Screening of my film "The Disaster Cannot Be Contained"
Curated by Amira Gad

https://brutus.nl/en/programme/on+view/wild+summer+of+art+2024/

screening of The Battle of Empty Stomachs at MAO MUSEUM

Datum:
Locatie: MAO Museum
https://www.maotorino.it/en/evento/evolving-soundscapes-film-club/

The Battle of Empty Stomachs

Datum:
Locatie: IFFR
https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2024/films/the-battle-of-empty-stomachs

The Politics of the Armed Lifeboat

Datum:
Locatie: Radius CCA Delft
In samenwerking met: Hilda Moucharrafieh
https://www.radius-cca.org/en/agenda/opening-two-new-exhibitions-at-radius-diana-al-halabi-hilda-moucharrafieh-the-politics-of-the-armed-lifeboat-junghun-kim-breathe

At the Table

Datum:
Locatie: Garage Rotterdam
https://catalogus.garagerotterdam.nl/exhibition/at-the-table/

Chewing With Political Teeth

Datum:
Locatie: Gemaal op Zuid
In samenwerking met: Gemaal op Zuid

Solo exhibition at Gemaal op Zuid curated by Leana Boven

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cli5w4Ks02R/

Peformance "Hungry Hungry Politicians"

Datum:
Locatie: Framer Framed
In samenwerking met: Salwa Foundation
https://salwa.nl/agenda/homemade-seeds-friday

Striking Normativity: The Art of Being Surprised (Essay)

Datum:
Locatie: Online | Sarmad Magazine
In samenwerking met: Sarmad Magazine

Essay published on Sarmad Magazine

https://sarmadmagazine.com/Striking-Normativity-The-Art-of-Being-Surprised

Videoranjersey "Contemporary video art from the Netherlands" (Screening)

Datum:
Locatie: Jersey Art Center, Jersey

Screening of my film Aspect Ratio

Rape culture, Language, and Marwan Habib (Article)

Datum:
Locatie: Online | Raseef 22

An essay I wrote about Rape culture a sexual harrassed I have encountered in Lebanon got imprisoned in Miami

https://raseef22.net/article/1085958-rape-culture-language-and-marwan-habib

"The Last Supper or a Class in History" (performance)

Datum:
Locatie: IDFA

A performance responding to the Palestinian artist Jumana Manna's film Wild Relatives which unfolds a matrix of plant lives, peasants' lives, and seed banks. Following a trip of seeds from Aleppo to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, back to Lebanon, and finally back to the Arctic. "The Last Supper or a Class In History" performance was part of the program "To Carry The Sun" curated by Narges Mohammadi for IDFA Film Festival | 2021

Cairo Video Festival screening "Aspect Ratio" (screening)

Datum:
Locatie: Medrar

Screening of my film "Aspect Ratio" at Cairo Video Festival

https://www.cvf.medrar.org/portfolios/aspect-ratio/

Material Context

Datum:
Locatie: Het Archief Robert Fruinstraat 52

Graduation show of the MFA at Piet Zwart Institute of 26 artists, 2 works of mine are presented in this exhibition.

Holding Palestine

Datum:
Locatie: Piet Zwart Institute

7 days performance, holding the banner in solidarity with Palestinian people and against the censorship of Piet Zwart Institute management.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CPpphQOsjgu/

Print & Play (Online Exhibition) “Your Guide to Taking Back (Temporarily) What We Have Taken From You (Permanently) ”

Datum:
Locatie: Online

digital downloadable work | (part of Print&Play exhibition) | 2021

printandplayexhibition.com/catalogue/on-display?itemId=gr1478jysi0ub6h5vsmmphuezwfvk8
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