Steve Sabella

Steve Sabella (Arabic ستيف سابيلا), born (May 19, 1975) in Jerusalem, is a Berlin-based Palestinian artist who uses photography and photographic installations as his principle modes of expression, and is especially recognised for his photo collage artworks.^[1] He is the holder of the Ellen Auerbach Award (2008) granted by the Akademie der Künste^[2] (Academy of the Arts) in Berlin and was one of the twenty three commissioned artists for the inauguration of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art^[3] in Doha where he presented a critical installation entitled Settlement - Six Israelis & One Palestinian.^[4]

Sabella left Jerusalem to live in London in 2007 to continue higher education. Sabella’s relationship to Jerusalem was the subject of his art for many years until he theorized that Jerusalem was in Exile which made clear to him his state of mind as to why he felt constantly out of place in his city of birth. This led to the production of two short documentary films exploring Sabella’s notion of exile.^[5]

Sabella was kidnapped in Gaza in 2005 while on duty with the United Nations with a colleague from Australia.^[6] Released after few hours, the incident was not publicized by the artist, but was an imperative step in deconstructing identity, labels, origin and belonging which was portrayed in his subsequent artworks and a TEDx talk in 2012 with the theme of "Dare to Question my Name or Where I Come From".^[7][8] Steve Sabella studied art photography at the Musrara School of Photography in Jerusalem^[9] (1994-1997), and holds a BA in Visual Arts from the State University of New York (2007). Sabella received his first MA with a Caparo Award of Distinction in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster (2008) and his second Masters in Art Business at Sotheby's Institute of Art in London (2009). The latter MA has enabled Sabella to write several published essays that look at the business of art from an artist’s perspective.

Early career

During his life in Jerusalem, Sabella worked in parallel as artist and as a professional art photographer. As one of the official photographers for UNDP, UNICEF and many other organizations, he was one of the very few photographers with complete access to the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza Strip during the Second Intifada which drastically limited Palestinians mobility. He was able to capture the daily Palestinian life in a positive light in contrast to the plethora of images circulating in the media at the time showing Palestinians in a negative one. Pillars Magazine listed Sabella as one of the most established brands in Palestine in a list of the top ten for 2005.^[10]

Sabella left Palestine in 2007 and established the Palestine Photo Bank with the mission of promoting and supporting a positive image of Palestine and its people. The images are a unique vision of a diverse land, shown through the eyes of a native Palestinian photographer. As he states, “The world is accustomed to seeing Palestine in a negative light; as victims, impoverished, and in a constant state of turmoil - something that has been imbued by the media over the decades. This is not to claim that occupation does not exist or that conditions are not hard for Palestine, but is just one way to give the Palestinian image justice. There is more to Palestine than what is currently portrayed. This is one way to counter the negative construction of the image of Palestine and Palestinians.”^[11]

From 2007 onwards Sabella focused solely on his art career, and decided to expand the mission of the Palestine Photo Bank to include other native Palestinian photographers who are taking images with a similar vision. With the continuing work of the invited photographers, and the documentation Sabella photographed in occupied Palestine from the year 1998 - 2007 he hopes to establish a unique visual archive in the history of Palestinian documentary photography.^[12]

Awards

Steve Sabella was nominated and awarded the Ellen Auerbach Award in 2008 granted by the Akademie der Künste. The prize included the publication of an art book on the artist. Sabella was also shortlisted and exhibited for the Terry O'Neil Contemporary Photography Award in the U.K.^[13] In 2008 he was granted the Caparo Award of Distinction for the MA in Photographic Studies, University of Westminster through a Chevening Scholarship.^[14] He also won the Said Foundation scholarship for a second Masters degree in Art Business at Sotheby's Institute of Art.^[15]

Education

Exhibitions

Sabella was one of the most exhibited artists in Palestine’s art spaces between 1998 - 2007.^[16] Sabella also has shown internationally and in 2010 was one of the 23 commissioned and selected artists for the inaugural exhibition at the opening of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar. The work Settlement - Six Israelis & One Palestinian was shown as part of the exhibition 'Told, Untold, Retold' curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fillrath.^[17]

Public collections

Sabella’s work has been collected by the several institutions, museums and private collectors including The British Museum, London,^[18] MATHAF, Doha, Ars Aevi Museum,^[19] Sarajevo, Salsali Private Museum,^[20] Dubai and Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.

Critical art talks

TEDx

Sabella’s involvement in the essence of image making and their construction, and their influence on one’s life, and Sabella's journey from a state of exile to liberation he was invited to give a TEDx talk in Marrakech in Sept, 2012 with the theme Dare to Question my Name or Where I Come From.^[21] Audience participant, Mr Martin Rose, country director, British Council, wrote, Steve Sabella was intriguing, refusing to be defined by his origins but constantly playing with them – his relationship with those origins and, perhaps above all, with the deductions and assumptions that people make about him from their partial and filtered knowledge of those origins. A Christian from Jerusalem, he declined to wear labels, is of Palestine without being Palestinian, of Jerusalem without reference to East or West. His art is a fractured photography of exile and reintegration, a beguiling exploration of an identity he obstinately refuses to acknowledge except on his own terms. His ability to play light-heartedly but in deadly earnest with others’ perceptions of himself is both delightful and tragic – he called one instance of it, the Israeli inability to see him as Palestinian because he did not conform to stereotype, as ‘the Dead See’.^[22]

Sabella has also given several talks on the theme of deconstructing Jerusalem and exile in places such as the University of Cambridge, University of Turin, School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS, University of East London, Accademia Albertina in Turin, Contemporary Art Platform Kuwait, University of Rostock, Akademie der Künste in Berlin & and the British Museum in London.

Work philosophy

Martina Corgnatti expressed that Sabella's work explores the uncanny and searches for a meaning in it. It delves into private and hidden territories; places where people might not usually dare to explore. Deeply personal, the work comes from his own experiences, creating a strong artistic identity and visual language. Indefinable by label or category in his own being, he physically uprooted himself from a singular fixed geography, which allowed him to speak openly about universal concepts. A strong thread in his work is the confrontational space between physical and mental states of being. As she expressed;

From 1997 on, the images, series and projects of Steve Sabella are periscopes drowned in the invisible of human condition, the uncanny and the search for a meaning; an “exile” that starts as physical and contingent and ends becoming mental, a category of the soul that needs an answer, or a series of answers from each one of us; answers that change – evolve during a lifetime. So, Sabella raised the horizon to his own eyelevel: From a contingent one to a universal one, escaping every rhetoric, though not losing his identity as an artist, but on the contrary, conquering it.^[23]

Steve Sabella’s oeuvre unfolds like a book. Its chapters chronicle the artist’s journey towards visual and intellectual maturation and bravely investigate his shifting psychological states, narrating a deeply personal individuation process. Thus, in order to fully appreciate the triumph of Sabella’s work, it is vital to take into account the evolution of his practice, from his first photographic series Search (1997) and Identity (2002) to the work he presented in solo exhibition Euphoria & Beyond at the Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai (May 2 to June 11, 2011).^[24]

Jerusalem in exile (2006)

"Jerusalem in Exile is a key project in the oeuvre of artworks of Steve Sabella.^[25] In it he found an answer why he felt out of place in his city of birth Jerusalem. Since its conception in 2006 the project's initial theory that Jerusalem is in exile developed and extended to theorize that Jerusalem has been transformed into an image and that we now live in the era of the 'Colonization of the Imagination'."^[26][27]

Till the End. Photo Emulsion on Jerusalem stone, 2004 by Steve Sabella. British Museum collection

"The city considered a bridge between heaven and earth may be absent in Sabella's photographs, but everything in these frames indicates the manner by which this native photographer has rebuilt his own Jerusalem. And yet, it is in Sabella's conscious avoidance of photographing Jerusalem that the visual artist has managed to recreate the universality of a place with which he identifies. In that respect, his search for his true self may be likened to those monks who, drawn by Jerusalem, came from distant lands only to spend the rest of their lives in bare and desolate landscapes. Only there could Sabella find a Jerusalem where he might breathe fresh air".^[28]

Exit (2007)

"In 2006, he began a consecutive series of photographic works to document his experience of exile in its various stages of adjustment and emotional perception, using two disparate forms to address this issue. One, entitled Exit (2006)^[29] is a series of hands—aged, twisted, without any further identity—that paralleled Sabella’s own state of mind and feelings of alienation and estrangement right before his departure from Palestine.".^[30]

Exit, 2007 by Steve Sabella

"I didn’t leave Jerusalem, she left me”, but before this 'departure', Sabella created his Exit series – a likely nod to his impending physical exodus, but also reflective of a whirling mental vortex that was about to arrive. It was the first time a human element – hands – made their way into his body of work and just as deformed, twisted, excruciating - looking and agonising as those hands appear, so too Sabella felt. “I became consciously aware that I had lost my centre, my point of origin,” he explains, “and it was here that the physical space [Jerusalem] meant nothing to me.” London didn’t help Sabella – her “lack of architectural harmony” made him feel all the more alienated and he sunk into a bottom - less pit of deliberation."^[31]

In exile (2008)

"Palestinian-born artist Steve Sabella could well be a younger, more alternative, more artistic version of the late Edward Said. Like the literary exile who lived in an enclave of a world he had created for himself on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, surrounded and consumed and embedded in the construct of texts that deconstructed the reality he struggled with, Sabella is one who lives in an equal state of alienation – confined to an exile^[32] that transcends place: London, and rather is contained in the bounds of his mind. A mind that like Said’s did deconstructs only to rebuild again, but in this case, using a terminology of visual narratives."^[33]

In Exile, 2008 by Steve Sabella

"Physical exile in London followed mental exile in 2007. There, his artistic grappling with the omnipresent feelings of alienation took on a new, more complex shape. The windows shown from multiple perspectives in the works of In Exile are views from the place where the artist lives. The symbolism here is intentionally many-layered. The windows provide prospects and hope, seeming to permit the widest variety of angles of view, but still remain closed and keep the viewer outside, like an uninvolved observer. Life plays out in front of the window, but access to it is blocked. Here the artist seems a captive of the eternal search for himself in the mosaic of his mental landscape. He draws the viewer into disturbing views and robs him of balance and security. He deconstructs the familiar in order to assemble it anew, thereby creating a new constellation of reality that establishes parallels to the experiences of a never-ending exile."^[34]

Settlement – Six Israelis & One Palestinian (2008/2010)

"In a 2009 commission for the opening of the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar, the artist surprised viewers with an exceptional piece. The exhibition featured works of twenty- three contemporary artists with roots in the Middle East, who each proposed a different narrative of identity and history... Sabella’s contribution was again one of a self-investigative portrayal. He installed six large photographs of Israeli citizens on one wall, and a single photograph of himself centered on the opposite wall. The subjects are unarmed, half naked—yet in self-confident poses. While again putting himself in the midst of the work’s narrative, this time he doesn’t operate with symbolic or abstract forms. Showing himself as outnumbered by Israelis directly critiques the political situation in Palestine, and showing all figures undressed down to their boxer shorts simultaneously points to the vulnerability of both sides. The installation forced visitors to walk between the two opposing walls, placing the viewer in the midst of the piece, as if taking part in an actual event. What links this work back to Sabella’s other series is again the importance of the title: “Settlement—Six Israelis & One Palestinian”^[35]

Settlement - Six Israelis & One Palestinian, 2010 at MATHAF by Steve Sabella

"His latest project called Settlement – Six Israelis & One Palestinian.^[36] The title itself is problematic, and the problem grows when the viewer finds himself in the middle of a narrow gap between two walls, surrounded by the image of two concrete walls, and in front of them the life size pictures of six men (on one side) and another (on the other side), all wearing just underpants. The title informs us about their identity that would obviously be left unknown, since all the superstructures, and the accessories that give shape to the world displaying one’s identity, have been swept away... With his work Sabella has been able to go beyond every cliché ; as he himself says, he got rid of all the "nostalgic layers that gave shape to many works realized in Israel and Palestine", in order to push himself on to a different border; not an emotional border, but a border of consciousness. “... We are confronting each other’s‘Otherness’—face-to-face, and right to the core. The borders whether mental or physical, might move aside and a dialogue of a different nature might take place."^[37]

In transition (2010)

"The series “In Transition”^[38] relates to early phases of this new state of mind, one of greater lightness, filled with the effort to “unlock the aesthetic and beauty” buried in the artist’s brain. Light shines through the branches of trees, caught in floating movements, ephemeral and fragile like the first rays of morning light after a long and dark night. Here, a cautious hope enters Sabella’s universe, a hope that gains in momentum in “Euphoria”, a triptych celebrating the euphoric deliverance from the mental bonds of anxiety in what might be called a 'mental heterotopia'.”^[39]

In Transition, 2010 by Steve Sabella

"In Exile’s subject matter metaphorically takes on themes of entry and exit, openings and closings, inside and outside. he was relieved, happy even, but unaware of what would come next until a chance discussion with a friend in dubai in 2010 became the proverbial Pandora’s Box and BOOm! In Transition came next, stemming from an aware- ness that, “there is no need to create art just from depression.” Sabella’s hands shook as he shot trees and grass in london – elements chosen for their organic quality and their allusion to growth, movement and change. Some areas of the imag- es are heavily blurred, while others are distinctly clear – an intentional pictorial definition of the series’ name. One cannot dispute that the work suggests a phase-like, in-limbo, quality."^[40]

Euphoria (2010)

"In contrast, the Euphoria^[41] triptych is a joyous retinal explosion. Cut and assembled from hundreds of fragments of trees, like those shown In Transition, the resulting photomontages of organic fluidity emanate cathartic relief and a transcendence of the state of ‘mental exile.’"^[42]

Euphoria, 2010 by Steve Sabella

"...These contorted passageways through his own psyche led the artist to the roots of his wounds and gave him an inkling of the possibility of healing. While the destructiveness of being uprooted was at the center of In Exile, Sabella’s newest works move, release and liberation into the foreground. Euphoria (2010) alludes to the blissful feeling of being freed of mental fetters. This feeling – possibly short-lived, as the artist himself concedes – is expressed in playful-seeming, uprooted trees..."^[43]

Beyond euphoria (2011)

"In the same way that Sabella’s fury rose in parallel to tensions during the first and Second Intifada, his euphoria augmented with each event that contributed to the Arab Spring. “The spark that ignited in me, ignited in the Arab world,” he says. In always being true to himself and his work, Sabella sought to mirror his self and that of the region’s uprising so that they appear one and the same. Initial pieces from Beyond Euphoria were destroyed and the resulting images reflect a freedom, a boundless energy never before seen in his oeuvre. The inevitable question is where to from here?"^[44]

Beyond Euphoria, 2011 by Steve Sabella

"Beyond Euphoria^[45] relishes in a freedom never seen before in Sabella’s oeuvre, a freedom where possibilities are limitless and new fictional spaces beckon to be explored."^[46]

"The titles clearly indicate the emotional stages in which the artist found himself, but reveal—in conjunction with the actual artwork—an aspect more linked to the process of each work: the more euphoric the artist became, the more he aimed for a dissolution of forms."^[47]

Metamorphosis (2012)

"Sabella is now presenting his most recent series entitled Metamorphosis.^[48] It is conceived as an ongoing project, which the artist is planning to add to indefinitely, in the future. Whatever his state of mind and emotional situation, it will find its way into this body of work. Again, Sabella has chosen a much-telling title for this work: metamorphosis describes a process, with no clear ending of its ‘morphing’ process, nor a clear definition of its beginning or end … For Sabella, Metamorphosis has a rather personal meaning: “The way I understand metamorphosis is that the rebirth will still remember or carry with it some burdens of the past, given that there is no DNA change. I do perceive my life in a more mature way now.” The artist doesn’t narrate sequentially, but rather arranges his works in multi-layered, repetitive structures of motifs – he doesn’t morph one object into the shape of another. His motifs for this series are powerful symbols of Palestinian life, yet in his arrangement of them, the artist de-connotes them."

He aims for a new visual experience – scattered images, at a second glance, reveal new, underlying structures. “In my photo collages the consciousness of form (what to collage – in essence what to photograph) is what enables the collage at a certain point to achieve its visual unity, trigger different reactions, and go beyond the first indexical association of the photographed image. So when I photograph a barbed wire, the immediate connotation would be the restriction of movement, but it could also refer to pain, physical pain if one gets stuck in it. An unexpected connotation would be to use it as a stitching thread, to stitch wounds. Notice how the wire appears to go in the space and out it. That idea is in conflict with its form and function - this is exactly the opposition I want to focus on in Metamorphosis. It is the conflict between form and function, between visualisation and perception.

Metamorphosis portrays the scars of trauma, which the artist experienced in Palestine and since his departure. “I remember telling the world: ‘I am free’, during the creation of Euphoria and Beyond Euphoria. Now I realise that I was mirroring a state of mind in these two projects, just like In Exile in 2008, and that was only the start of my liberation. It was inevitable that once the euphoria settled down, which is by nature ephemeral, my core had to be shaken again. The hard work is now! Metamorphosis is a process, a long one, and the reconstruction of the self, especially for people who come from conflict zones, should be done with core ingredients that have shaped their lives and perception."^[49]

Family’s life influence on Sabella’s Art

Cécile Elise Sabella (2008)

Sabella has explored the concept of ‘exile’ from a different perspective: his daughter.^[50] As he touchingly explains: "When Cécile was born...it was only a question of time until we had difficulties communicating. She speaks Swiss German [the language of Sabella’s wife], I speak Arabic, and neither of us understands what the other is talking about. She is simply foreign to me." Sabella’s response was a series of photographs of the material of his daughter’s clothes, from outside and inside. "This work attempts to establish a relationship between us by photographing her clothes from both sides – inside and outside. A cloth, no matter what, will always have its other side. This mirrors the basic fact that in essence, Cécile and I will always have a connection."^[51]

The latter, a tender and apologetic declaration of love from the artist to his young daughter, portrays pairs of square-cuts from the child’s colourful clothes .... Conceived as an artist’s book, these images too deal with duality, but they also mirror the essential connection between a father and a daughter, two exiles born in Jerusalem, two of the same cloth.^[52] As he explains, "But Cecile did not learn my mother tongue – it was agonising because I gave birth to someone so foreign to me. But when we went to London after three years she was standing at this exact window like this [above], and she said to me and my wife, “I want to go home – I want to go back to my country.” Something happened in this moment: her state of consciousness mirrored mine, and for the first time we had a common language, the language of exile. I wanted to mirror this language."^[53]

It was in that moment, in the sharing of the sameness of a view of exile, that a language was developed between father and child, between one exile and another. And it was in that moment, that a realisation of relativity and perspective was formed. In Cécile Elise Sabella (2008), Sabella photographs the fabric of Cecile’s clothes from both sides, making testimony to the science of “the other side” and the duality of exile. In this work we bear witness to a father, who is an artist, who is brought to understanding in a single moment, that no matter what, there is another side; and a connection, even in silence, with Cecile.^[54]

Television and documentaries

Sabella's life was the subject of several television and film documentaries, the earliest was in 1998 just after his graduation from the Musrara School of Photography.^[55] Sabella’s project jerusalem in exile^[56] explored the mental image Palestinians held of Jerusalem and has gained international attention, leading to its production into a documentary film by Eyes Infinite Films. Palestinian TV production Ma’an featured Sabella as the main artist in its film Europe Through Their Eyes in 2010. Most recently he was featured as artist of the month on the satellite Television station Ikono TV.^[57]

Selected list of TV/Film productions

• IKONOTV. Steve Sabella Artist of the Month of May 2011.^[58] Three featured episodes that aired on the satellite channel.^[59]
• Beyond Blue & Gray. Eyes Infinite Films, USA. 2007. The film consists of five episodes. Two of them were about Jerusalem in Exile (2006) and Kan Yama Kan (2005).^[60]
• TV DOCUMENTARY (2004)^[61] Covering the Identity Project of 2002, Israeli TV Channel 1, directed by Avi Peretz.^[62]
• TV DOCUMENTARY (1998)^[63] covering the Search project of 1997, Israeli TV Channel 1, directed by Avi Peretz.^[64]
• Ma'an News Agency, Palestine. Europe Through Their Eyes. TV Documentary on Sabella's art and life in Europe.

Published essays by the artist

Sabella has written on the value of Palestinian and Arab art from a critical point of view, often focusing on the intrinsic value of artworks which collide with their fiscal value. Because the articles look at the art market from an artist point of view, some of the essays triggered Sabella to speak publicly on the topic, such as at the inaugural opening of the Contemporary Art Platform in Kuwait.

Selected essays

• The Colonization of the Imagination, Contemporary Practices Art Journal - Volume 10. 2012^[65]
• The Business of Looking, Contemporary Practices Art Journal - Volume 9. 2011^[66]
• Reconsidering the Value of Palestinian Art & Its Journey into the Art Market. Contemporary Practices Art Journal - Volume VII & VIII. 2011^[67]
• 'Valued' in the 'West', Sold in the 'East' . Contemporary Art Practices journal – Volume V. 2009^[68]
• Is The United Arab Emirates Constructing its Art History? The Mechanisms that Confer Value to Art. Contemporary Art Practices journal – Volume IV. 2009^[69]
• Palestinian Conceptual Art. Emily Jacir]] Shifting to an Art that Engages the Mind of the Viewer. Contemporary Art Practices journal – Volume III. 2008^[70]

Selected Reviews

1. Schoene, Dorothea. “Steve Sabella’s Ecdysis: The Catharsis of Metamorphosis”. Contemporary Practices Journal. 2012.^[71]
2. Schoene, Dorothea. “Stages of Transition. Visualizing exile in the work of Steve Sabella”. Retrospective Review, Afterimage - The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Vol. 39, No. 6. 2012.^[72]
3. Myrna, Ayad. “Exodus and Back”, Retrospective Review, Canvas - Art and Culture from the Middle East and Arab world, p. 144 - 153. 2011.^[73]
4. Rossino, Sara. Steve Sabella in Conversation with Sara Rossino for the exhibition catalogue of The Changing Room curated by Aida Eltorie. pp. 140 – 149. 2011.^[74]
5. Paula, Christa. “Euphoria & Beyond”. Retrospective Review, The Empty Quarter Gallery as part of Sabella solo show Euphoria & Beyond. 2011.^[75]
6. El Rashidi, Yasmin. “Steve Sabella - The Journey of Artistic Interrogation and Introspection”, Retrospective Review, Contemporary Practices Journal, VI. 2010.^[76]
7. Corgnati, Martina. "Steve Sabella", Retrospective Review, Contemporary Practices Journal, VI. 2010.^[77]
8. Bank, Charlotte. "Steve Sabella: In Exile", Nafas Art Magazine - Universe in Universe. 2010.^[78]
9. Rossino, Sara. "Steve Sabella in Exile - Conversation with the Artist", Retrospective Review - text in Italian & English, Exhibition Catalogue published by the Metroquadro Gallery in Rivoli, Turin - May. 2010.^[79]
10. Bardaouil, Sam, Fellrath, Till. "Steve Sabella. Settlement - Six Israelis & One Palestinian", ‘Told Untold Retold’ exhibition catalogue / book for MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art. SKIRA PUBLICATION. 2010.^[80]
11. "Steve Sabella" (2009), In Exile & Cecile Elise Sabella reviewed in New Vision - Arab Contemporary Art in the 21st Century (Thames & Hudson & TransGlobe Publishing). p. 250 - 253.^[81]
12. Ann, Manie. "Steve Sabella", Mixed Messages: The Versatility of Collage, - Publisher: A & C Black Publishers Ltd. p 72 - 74. 2012.^[82]
13. Zia Krohn and Joyce Lagerweij (Hardcover), "Concrete Messages", published by Dokument in Sweden p. 59 - 63. 2010.^[83]
14. Boullata, Kamal. "Jerusalem in the Heart Two Urban Artists in Exile", Review was written in 2002, Palestinian Art - Saqi Books. 2009.^[84]
15. Holledge, Richard. "Painting the Middle East with too Broad of a Brush?" Wall Street Journal. March 2, 2011.^[85]
16. The Economist. "A Smithsonian in the Sand", Dec. 29, 2011.^[86]
17. Bank, Charlotte. "Euphoria and Beyond". Zakharif, Charlotte Bank's blog on contemporary artistic and cultural practice from the Arab world and beyond, nomadic lifestyle and transculturality.^[87]
18. Barrett, Nyree. "Palestinian Art In Dubai", -Time Out Dubai, p. 32 . 25/3/2010.^[88]
19. Sarkar, Bina. "Settlement" International Gallerie magazine, Issue 25. 2010.^[89]
20. Ravel, Stephanie. "Territory in Exile - Exile of Identity". L'Agenda Magazine, Jan. 2010.^[90]
21. Rubenstein, Danny. "Steve Sabella Blurring the Lines", Haaretz 03/11/2005.^[91]

Selected foreign language reviews

1. Bank, Charlotte. "Grenzgänge. Beispiele künstlerischen Arbeitens über Exil und Entwurzelung". Springerin - Austria. 2011. (German).^[92]
2. Bank, Charlotte. "Steve Sabella: In Exile". Nafas Art Magazine - Universe in Universe. 2010. (German).^[93]
3. Engelcke, Doerthe. "Von Angesicht zu Angesicht. Settlement – Six Israelis & One Palestinian". Zenith Magazine, Jan 2009. (German).^[94]
4. Malekshahi, Aishe. "Palästina ist Heimat trotz Besatzung. Kultureller Widerstand von der Westbank bis Gaza". Dradio feature. 2005. (German).^[95]
5. Rossino, Sara. "Euphoria". Juliet Art Magazine, p. 46-47. (Italian).^[96]
6. Rossino, Sara. "Steve Sabella in Exile - Conversation with the Artist", Retrospective Review - text in Italian & English, Exhibition Catalogue published by the Metroquadro Gallery in Rivoli, Turin - May. 2010. (Italian)^[97]
7. Rossino, Sara. "Steve Sabella". Juliet Magazine no.150, 2010, p. 70. (Italian).^[98]
8. Darwish, Najwan. "Steve Sabella in London: Life is a Short Exile, but". Al-Akhbar Newspaper. 17/09/2008. (Arabic).^[99]
9. Darwish, Najwan. "Steve Sabella: Jerusalem in Exile and 'Yerushalayim' is not from Gold". Al-Quds Al-Arabi, London. 24/12/07. (Arabic).^[100]
10. Darwish, Najwan. "Steve Sabella from Jerusalem to Exile". Al-Ayyam Newspaper (Palestine) 4/9/2007. (Arabic).^[101]
11. Darwish, Najwan. "Steve Sabella: Volatile Identity. Postal Stamps from the Times of Globalization and Electronic Mail". Al-Akhbar Newspaper (Lebanon). 8/7/2007. (Arabic).^[102]

See also

• Akademie der Künste
• Kamal Boullata
• British Museum
• IkonoMenasa
• List of University of Westminster alumni
• Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art
• Palestinian art
• TED (conference)

References

External links

• Official website
• Palestine Photo Bank
• Euphoria & Beyond, Steve Sabella solo exhibition video tour at the Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai.
• The Empty Quarter Gallery
• Metroquadroarte Gallery
• Eb & Flow Gallery
• Contemporary Art Platform (CAP), Kuwait

Persondata
Name	Sabella, Steve
Alternative names
Short description	Palestinian artist
Date of birth	19 May 1975
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death