Shadi Alzaqzouq (1981, Benghazi) is a visual artist who drew up in a Palestinian community in Libya. As an artist without a passport and without a homeland, Alzaqzouq has lived an eventful life. Alzqzouq grew up in Kofra, Libya and was raised by parents of Palestinian descent. After the Oslo Peace Accords, he relocated with his family to Gaza where he studied Music at the Polytechnical Institute. There, he worked as a music instructor in a primary school for five years.

 

In 2002 Zaqzouq became a member of the group Windows from Gaza en he became a frequent visitor of the French Cultural Centre, the only cultural centre on the Gaza Strip. It was here that he first showed his paintings during the project ‘Gaza Upside Down’, a project that would later travel through Palestine In 2006 Alzaqzouq won the Young Palestinian Artist Prize of the Abdel Mushin Qattan Foundation, which he followed up with a residency at the International City of Art in Paris, courtesy of the French Consulate in Jersusalem. In 2006, Alzaqaouq was awarded with a residency at La Cité Internationales des Arts and subsequently moved to Paris where he completed a B.F.A at the Université Paris VIII. In 2015 he participated in the Dismaland theme park project by the British artist Bansky, where he was told his artwork would be removed from the show after he staged an anti-Israel protest.

 

Alzaqzouq worked on various solo- and group exhibitions in France, the Netherlands, Korea, Tunisia, Syria, Dubai and Palestine. Alzaqzouq currently lives and works in Paris.



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