Via the breadth of her multifaceted imagination and the powerful sense of ethical responsibility imbedded in her work, artist Tania El Khoury creates sensorially rich interactive installations, performances (site-specific, interactive, one-on-one, “lectures...”) and physical and aural encounters all in the service of engagement. Serious in intent – mining and questioning issues of national and transnational constructions of identity, human rights violations, forced migration, gender violence and trauma, the effects of decades of wars and occupations, the relation of archives and history - her work is also playful, theatrical, elegant, and complex.

El Khoury views audiences as co-creators and collaborators; they are the primary and driving element in a piece’s creation. Whether emerging from extensive research, an image in a dream, or a collaboration with a designer, musician, historian, or archaeologist, with each project she invents new forms and experiments with audience interactivity often in public rather than in traditional art and performance spaces. Continually investigating the political potential of live art and the role of art in producing intimacy and empathy, she asks: “who is invited in?”

Co-founder of OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College she is positioned to support many other artists’ work. Her goal as a curator: to shift institutions into becoming artist-centric spaces that put people first.

photo: Nour Annan