Nidaa Badwan is a Palestinian artist, born in Abu Dhabi in 1987, and raised in the Gaza Strip. She is an Italian citizen.
Nidaa Badwan’s artistic research is profoundly influenced by the experience of growing up in the tormented Palestinian territories. In 2013, as an act of rebellion against the impositions and discriminations of the Hamas regime – especially against women, she decided to isolate herself for several months in her room in Gaza. Through forced self-imposed seclusion, she wanted to pursue an experience of artistic freedom, through introspection she sought to connect with her own self, with her own emotions and intimate vocations. Hence, she gave life to the series of photographs Cento giorni di solitudine (One Hundred Days of Solitude) in 2016, which was published, among others, on the front page of the New York Times. The intense and dramatic shots rendered with the masterful use of light that filters into the dark and narrow environment where the artist retreated, document daily moments of meditated seclusion, of resistance and peaceful rebellion against external violence and repression.

«I believe that everything, even the simplest things, can be reformulated in an artistic way. Art is the creative force that allows us to reshape what is normal and reformulate it so that it becomes abnormal. Art allows me to be free from my community and find a space for my free expression.» Nidaa Badwan
The series Cento giorni di solitudine is followed in 2020 by the series Le Oscure Notti dell’Anima and in 2021 by The Game which pays homage to the great poet Dante Alighieri on the 700th anniversary of his death. In 2023, the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia commissioned a project dedicated to the Mashrabiya (in Islamic architecture, a wooden grid that safeguards the environments inhabited by women from prying eyes): Nidaa Badwan subverts the rule by proposing the series Love behind the Mashrabiya in which the wooden structure hides nothing, rather it becomes the backdrop to the industrious life of the subjects portrayed.

In 2016 Nidaa Badwan was awarded “The 2016 Sovereign Middle East & North Africa Art Prize” dedicated to the 30 best artists from the Arab world, with prizes and exhibitions in Dubai. In March 2017 she was speaker at the UNESCO conference “Cultural heritage and identity: an Arab youth perspective”, held in Carthage (Tunisia). In October 2018 she participated as a speaker in the TEDx San Marino.
Nidaa Badwan exhibited her photographic works in institutions in Italy and around the world, including: Salannunziata, Imola (2023); Museum for Art in Wood, Philadelphia (2023); Museo della Città – Spazio Presente, Ancona (2022); Pinacoteca Civica Crivelli, Sant’Elpidio a Mare (2021); California Museum of Photography, Riverside (2019); Musée du quai Branly, Paris (2019); San Francesco Museum, San Marino (2018-2019); Colorno Palace, Parma (2018); Institute Contemporary Art, Richmond, Virginia (2018); Palazzo Patrizi, Siena (2018); Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin (2017); IVAM, Valencia (2017); Villa Bertelli, Forte dei Marmi (2017); Armani Hotel, Dubai (2016); SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2016); Trapholt Museum, Kolding (2016); Palazzo Graziani, San Marino (2016); Jerusalem and West Bank (2015).

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SOLO EXHIBITIONS

NIDAA BADWAN
Rinascita

17 September to 15 November, 2024

Exhibition  →