DNA

A Palestinian contemporary visual artist born in 1981 in Benghazi, Libya, to parents originally from Jaffa. He spent his early years in Kofra, Libya, before relocating with his family to Gaza after the 1995 Oslo Peace Accords. Alzaqzouq studied music at the Palestine Technical Institute in Deir al-Balah and taught music at a local primary school for five years.

In 2002, he joined the Shababeek for Contemporary Art Collective↗ in Gaza. His first solo exhibition “Gaza Upside Down,” toured several cities in Palestine. In 2006, he won the Young Artist of the Year Award organized by the A. M. Qattan Foundation for his project “Red Line.” That same year, he received a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where he later enrolled at Université Paris VIII, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2009.

Alzaqzouq has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions across France, the Netherlands, Korea, Tunisia, Syria, Dubai, and Palestine. Notably, in 2015, he participated in the Dismaland theme park project by British artist Banksy, where his artwork was removed after he protested the inclusion of an Israeli artist in the project. He also contributed to the exhibition “Crisis of History #2: Fight History” at Framer Framed in Amsterdam, which ran from February 8 to March 8, 2015, and was curated by Robert Kluijver. Currently. Shadi Alzaqzouq lives and works in Paris.