Inas Halabi: Letters to Fritz and Paul

Letters to Fritz and Paul (2016–8) connects the histories of museum collections and scientific research to the violence of European colonialism. The video imagines an epistolary exchange between the artist and Fritz and Paul Sarasin, two Swiss cousins, lovers, and scientists, to question how museums construct and narrate history.

Inas Halabi (b. 1988, Palestine) is a 2017–19 artist-in-residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. She received her BA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 2011 and her MFA from Goldsmiths College in 2014. In 2016 the A.M. Qattan Foundation named her its Young Artist of the Year.

The Smith College Museum of Art is the first institution in the U.S. to exhibit Halabi’s work.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.