Basma al-Sharif
Lives and works in Berlin.
Using precise visual language, dark humour, and attention to landscape and sound, Palestinian artist and filmmaker Basma al-Sharif works across film, installation, writing, and photography. Creating lyrical, poetic works, her practice addresses ongoing violence and its representation; she explores the legacy of colonialism within seemingly inescapable power systems. She is based in Berlin.
Basma al-Sharif received an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007. She was a resident at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in 2009 and at the Pavillon Neuflize OBC at the Palais de Tokyo in 2014–2015. She received the Jury Prize at the Sharjah Biennial in 2009 and the Fundación Botín Visual Arts Fellowship in 2010. In 2018, she was among the first cohort of artists to participate in The Consortium Commissions, a programme initiated by Mophradat. She was a fellow of the Berlin Artistic Research Grant Programme in 2022–2023 and was nominated for the AWARE Prize in 2024.
Her solo exhibitions include The Place Where I Was Condemned to Live (De Appel, Amsterdam, 2025); Capital (The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 2022); And Therefore a Philistine (SALT Galata, Istanbul, 2020); A Philistine (CCA – Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 2019); Basma al-Sharif (Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, 2019); The Gap Between Us (The Mosaic Rooms, London, 2018); and Renée’s Room (Les Modules – Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2015).
Selected group exhibitions include Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum (2026), the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2026), the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (2025), the Hannah Ryggen Triennial (2025), Colomboscope, Après la fin. Cartes pour un autre avenir at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, the 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale, the Ruttenberg Contemporary Photography Series at the Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Mondays at MoMA, CCA Glasgow, the Whitney Biennial, Here and Elsewhere at the New Museum, the Berlin Documentary Forum, the Sharjah Biennial, and Manifesta 8. Her films have been screened at international festivals including Locarno, Berlin, Mar del Plata, Milan, London, Toronto, New York, Montréal, and Yamagata.
Her film Morgenkreis (Morning Circle) won the Grand Prize at the 39th Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, Best Documentary Short at Sharjah Film Platform 8, the ARTWORKS Best Film Award at the 14th Athens Avant-Garde Film Festival, and Best Experimental Film at Curtas Vila do Conde IFF, and was selected in 2026 as the Vimeo candidate for the European Film Awards at Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg.
Her first monograph, Semi-Nomadic-Debt-Ridden-Bedouins, was published by Lenz Press in May 2025.