Curated by Zehra Zehra
Sama Alshaibi | Lali Khalid | Carrie Mae Weems

Opening Reception
Friday, October 30, 6–8 PM
On view October 30 – January 16
Twelve Gates Arts, 106 N 2nd St

Sama Alshaibi

Born in Iraq to a Palestinian mother and Iraqi father, Sama Alshaibi is Regents Professor of Art at the University of Arizona,

working across photography, video, installation, and archival material in an image-based practice that emerges from aftermath — fragmentation and dispossession as conditions of political conflict and forced migration, often using her own body as a site carrying land, water, and colonial history. A Guggenheim Fellow, her work has been exhibited at MoMA, the Venice Biennale, and the Cairo Biennale, and her monographs include Sand Rushes In (Aperture, 2015) and Tell It to the River (2023).

Lali Khalid

Mehreen (Lali) Khalid (b. 1980, Lahore, Pakistan) lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.

She explores diaspora, displacement, identity, and migration through photography, video, and text, centering belonging, family, and the quiet rituals of home, with work that moves between the public and private to reflect on love and resilience. A Fulbright Scholar with an MFA from Pratt Institute, Khalid is a 2026 Penland School of Craft Distinguished Fellow and recipient of the Museum of Contemporary Photography's 2025–2026 Diane Dammeyer Fellowship; her new monograph, Letters to Azan, released June 2026 from Workshop Arts.

Carrie Mae Weems

Born in 1953 and living in Syracuse, New York, Carrie Mae Weems is a conceptual artist working primarily in photography, alongside text, fabric, audio, installation, and video,

whose practice confronts constructions of race and femininity in pursuit of new models to live by. Moving from staged, serialized narrative to the appropriation of archival and ethnographic imagery, her work takes aim at photography's role in propagating dehumanizing tropes and the historical omission of Black women from fine art institutions and canons.

Curator

Zehra Zehra

Zehra Zehra is a curator, strategist, producer, leader, and founder of Womxn in Windows (WxW).

Zehra builds and develops strategic partnerships between artists, concepts and institutions. Driven by a belief in the power of radical collaboration, she is committed to challenging dominant narratives and expanding how we see ourselves and each other. She has worked with institutions including MOCA, Academy Museum, Hauser & Wirth, Times Square Arts and many others across the United States and internationally.