ABOUT LARA BALADI
Lara Baladi is an internationally-recognized Egyptian-Lebanese artist, archivist and educator whose work questions the theoretical divide between myth, memory, sociopolitical narratives and the cycles inherent to history. In her investigations into archives, personal histories, socio-political narratives and myths, Baladi’s work spans a wide range of mediums, photography, analogue and digital collages, immersive video, sound, multimedia installations, architectural spaces, sculptures, tapestries and perfume. Baladi’s work has been published, exhibited and featured widely—from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Transmediale in Berlin, the Gwangju Biennial in South Korea, to the Hasselblad Foundation in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Baladi received fellowships from the Japan Foundation (2003) and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab (2014). She was an artist-in-residence at Art Omi (Ghent, New York, 2014), MacDowell (New Hampshire, 2015), and MIT (Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence, 2015) amongst others. Within her artistic practice, Baladi is active in socially engaged projects. For 15 years she was on the Board of Directors of the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art in Egypt and the Arab Image Foundation (AIF) in Lebanon. In 2006, she founded the artist residency Fenenin el Rehal (Nomadic Artists) in Egypt’s White Desert. During the 2011 Egyptian revolution and its aftermath, Baladi co-founded two media initiatives, Tahrir Cinema and Radio Tahrir.
Borg el Amal (Tower of Hope), Baladi’s ephemeral construction and sound installation, won the first prize at the 2008-09 Cairo International Contemporary Art Biennale. For Ukraine’s 2012 first Contemporary Art Biennial, she collaborated with the Kiev Kamera Orchestra to perform the Donkey Symphony —Borg El Amal’s sound component.
Vox Populi, Baladi’s ongoing initiative since 2011, includes a series of media initiatives, artworks, publications, an open source portal, Anatomy of Revolution, into web based archives related to revolutions and revolts in the global context.
In 2014-15, Baladi was a Fellow at MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. In 2015-16, she was the Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence at MIT’s Centre for Art, Science and Technology (CAST). Between 2015-2022, she was a lecturer in MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT). Currently, she is a Visiting Researcher at the CEDEJ, in Cairo, Egypt.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Filming Revolution by Alisa Lebow
BALADI ARTWORKS & PROJECTS
Artist in Residence, Centre for Art, Science & Technology (CAST)
Archiving As Resistance, Ibraaz online, Art & Culture from the Middle East
Fellowship, Open Documentary Lab, MIT
Lecturer, MIT's Program in Art, Culture & Technology (ACT)
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