Dima Hourani

Born 1985 in Jordan.

Dima Hourani gained her bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah, in 2011, and her master’s degree in fine arts from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway. She further holds a diploma in graphic design and educational rehabilitation.

Her artistic practice focuses on re-questioning and re-interpreting signs and symbols as well as stereotypes within a specific community. As a visual artist, she explores new spaces in the form of social interventions, as was the case with her project Past Tense Continuous. In her exhibitions, she makes use of elements of visual illusion that come from peculiar points of view and that distinguish between the fake and the real through the symbols and signs when imagined communities are created, as in Qalandia Lounge project.

Dima Hourani questions the role symbols and signs play in different cultures in relation to traditions and customs and how we as human beings relate to them. She creates and analyses the concept of doubt and presents alternative readings of political, social and cultural contexts. In her artistic works she intends to apply a form of questioning and new levels of interpretation of symbols as in her projects N’Oreal and Alrasasa at Rijksakademie Open, Amsterdam/Netherlands, in 2012. She intervenes in the mainstream meaning of approved and well-known symbols and creates alternative interpretations through their manipulation, as in Art Delivery. She explores the effects of globalization on communities, to prove the claims that reality and meaning is replaced with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality. In her work, she tries to give new characters for the concealed, and relocate the real, the concealed and the alternative, raising questions concerning power, propaganda, history and national heritage. Through various media, Dima Hourani examines the value of accepted symbols and visual language within certain communities. By proposing alternative readings, she argues on behalf of cultural hybridization and the possibility of change.

Dima Hourani has received various scholarships and awards, such as the Young Palestinian Talents Award for the Diversity of Artistic Expression from the Institut Culturel Farnco–Palestinien, a stipend by the Federal State of Lower Saxony, Germany, and the Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken. She was a fellow at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Braunschweig, Germany in 2013 and a guest fellow at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam in 2012.