Sama Alshaibis newest body of work from her solo exhibition Staging the Imagined, reflects the relationships of power and authority between photographer and subject. The work investigates how a particular historical period can alter viewers interpretations of photographs. Through various projects, Alshaibi reframes historical photographs and moving images that according to Grace Aneiza Ali reference a grave historic malpracticethe role of photography, both colonial and contemporary, in reducing the body, the life, the desires, the experiences, the hopes and dreams, indeed the very existence, of the Middle Eastern woman to a dangerous single storyone rooted in the primitive and in fear, fantasy, inferiority, and objectification.. In her central project, Carry Over, Alshaibi alludes to the Oriental portrait photographs of the regions women
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