Tarek Al-Ghoussein

In performative photographs and evocative images of landscapes, Tarek Al-Ghoussein explores personal, as well as more widespread, associations with the Middle East. A Palestinian raised in Kuwait and the United States, Al-Ghoussein initially worked as a documentary photographer and photojournalist. His images position distinctively Middle Eastern sites, such as Kuwaiti construction projects or Arabian deserts, against the charged symbols of his heritage, such as walls or the keffiyeh. In his recent “D Series,” Al-Ghoussein photographs himself dwarfed amidst desert expanses, or against fabric walls demarcating new buildings. The wall functions, in his work, as a reference to the Israeli-Palestine conflict and a metaphor for displacement and barriers to cultural heritage.