Taysir Batniji


Taysir Batniji is a Palestinian multidisciplinary artist, living in Paris. He is known primarily as a photographer, and video artist; and in his early career he worked as an installation artist, sculptor, and painter. His work addresses issues of the psychological effects of conflict. Batniji’s work has been shown widely in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, including at the Venice Biennale. He has lived in France since 1994.
WWW taysirbatniji.com

Early life, family and education

Taysir Batniji was born in 1966, in Gaza. He had eight siblings, and was the second to last born in the family. During the first intifada in 1987, one of his brothers died due to Israeli snipers. In November 2023, Batniji's family lost fifty-two members due to Israeli bombs during the Gaza war.
Batniji studied fine art and painting at An-Najah National University in Nablus. In 1994, he was awarded a fellowship to study at the in Bourges, France. He obtained French nationality in 2012.

Career

Batniji’s artwork is often displaying personal history, and the ongoing conflicts in Gaza. Gaza Diary is a short film by Batniji, which can be found online.
Batniji’s Watchtowers series feature black and white photographs of Israeli watchtowers on the West Bank. Watchtowers was influenced by the 2004 Bernd and Hilla Becher retrospective at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, which displayed the Bechers' German industrial building photographs, displayed in an organized grid format.
To My Brother is a series of 60 hand carvings on paper, dedicated to his brother that died in 1987. In 2012, he was awarded the Abraaj Capital Art Prize, for the To My Brother series.
His series Disruptions, consist of pixelated screenshot images taken from WhatsApp video calls during a period of violence, which are a visual reminder of our instability, fragility and the need for human connection. The Disruptions series was published in 2024 as an art book, with all of the profits going to the British medical charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians.
Batniji's artwork is in museum collections, including at the Centre Pompidou in Paris; the V&A Museum in London; the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar; and the Institut Valencià d'Art Modern in Valencia, Spain.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Diplopie, solo exhibition, Espace d’Art Contemporain André Malraux, Colmar, FranceHome Away From Home*, solo exhibition, Aperture Foundation, New York City, New York, USASuspended Time, solo exhibition, Prefix Institut of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaNo Condition Is Permanent, solo retrospective exhibition, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar

Group exhibitions

The Future of a Promise group exhibition, 54th Venice Biennale, Venice, ItalyRights of Future Generation group exhibition, 1st Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Sharjah, UAE