Hala Abubaker is an Arab artist, born in Jordan, of Palestinian descent, and currently based in Ohio, United States. She received her BA in Visual Arts from the University of Jordan, with a focus on sculpture, in 2013, becoming one of the first women to study sculpture in Jordan. She later earned her MFA in Sculpture + Expanded Practice from Ohio University and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Arts on the Artist/Scholar track, where she continues to develop her research-based art practice.
Abubaker’s work examines social and cultural identity through the decolonization of memory. Through objects, object-based installations, non-narrative video, and photography, she shifts perception and asserts connections that reveal the underlying structures shaping identity, belonging, and the relation between Self and Other. Grounded in sculpture, her practice incorporates woven fabrics, body casts, light, sound, text, and traditional materials. Her process is informed by research and sustained observation of the social and geopolitical conditions surrounding her. Raised as an Arab woman witnessing the turmoil that has shaped her region in the contemporary era, Abubaker’s work emerges from a need to understand the phenomenological structures through which identity, difference, and collective memory are formed.
She has participated in several exhibitions and residencies in Jordan, Europe, and the United States.