Tarek Al-Ghoussein is an artist and Professor of Visual Arts at New York University in Abu Dhabi.
As a Kuwaiti of Palestinian origin, much of Al-Ghoussein’s professional work deals with how his identity is shaped in a context of inaccessibility and loss.
His work explores the boundaries between landscape photography, self-portraiture and performance art. Choosing locations much in the same way a film director does, he moves between abstraction and the specific circumstances found in particular places. Relying on subtle interventions and non-invasive interactions, the images consider various aspects of “identity”.
Al-Ghoussein has exhibited extensively in Europe, the United States and The Middle East and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in prominent venues such as the 53rd and 55th Venice Biennales; the Singapore Biennale; the 6th and 7th Sharjah Biennales; Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Korea; and Kunstmuseum Bochum, Germany and Aperture Gallery, New York.
Al-Ghoussein’s work has been acquired by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Freer and Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution Washington D.C.; the Museum of Fine Art, Houston; the British Museum, London; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Sharjah Art Foundation; Sharjah; the Mori Art Museum,Tokyo; the Royal Photography Museum, Copenhagen; and the Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, among several others.