Welcome to Episode Four of Creatrix Pod and our guest is the brave, award-winning visual journalist, artist, and educator Tanya Habjouqa, who has been living with her children in Palestine.
In a powerful and important interview, Tanya talks with our resident interviewer Habib William Kherbek about her creative work, which is grounded in ethical practice and focuses on human rights, gender, representations of otherness, dispossession and resettlement in the Middle East.
During this interview she takes us through the trajectory of her life and work, recounting her upbringing between Jordan and Texas, and discussing her background in anthropology and theatre. She talks about her process, how titles are the main starting point, and describes her approach of thinking in short stories and testimonies. Tanya also mentions her use of Ayahuasca, explaining how she has asked the hallucinogens questions to guide her more difficult works and find healing in the work.
She discusses living in Palestine at the present moment, expressing the cruelty she witnesses, which is at a point where she is now literally gasping, and her plans to get out and take a break for the sake of her children. She tells us of the harrowing experiences working in the occupied territories, conveying stories while navigating the challenges of a gender-driven nature of photojournalism in the Middle East as well as the overt racism or cognitive dissonance prevalent in some of the most renowned journalistic institutions in the West. She also discusses how she uses subversion and metaphor through her work.
Tanya holds an MA in Global Media and emphasis on Middle Eastern politics. She is the author of the ground-breaking book Occupied Pleasures (2015), a founding member of Rawiya, the first all-female photography collective from the Middle East and her work is in the collections of MFA Boston, Institut du Monde Arab, and the Carnegie Museum of Art. She is a mentor for the Arab Documentary Photography Program, nurturing marginalized narratives and narrative-creators with the space and skills to tell their stories.
A Nikon Europe Ambassador, she is a winner of the 2014 World Press Photo and a key advisor and educator to NOOR Foundation and Nikon NOOR academy.
Tanya Habjouqa has exhibited extensively throughout the US and increasingly in Europe and the Middle East, working for institutions including the National Geographic. She is represented by East Wing Gallery.
It’s an honour to have Tanya Habjouqa speak with us on Creatrix Pod, which is presented by Claire Zakiewicz and our resident interviewer Habib William Kherbek.
