Obadah is a transdisciplinary cultural practitioner whose conceptual practice integrates painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance. Drawing on roles as artist, art director, art teacher, and art producer, their work is confrontational—satirical and abject—probing Sapienideologies, pedagogies, and semiotics across histories and futurities. Through lived experience and research, the practice forms a sociological archive of the contemporary, filtered through a nonconforming body read through a chorus of labels—He/She/They; Muslim, Queer, Arab; Foreigner, Terrorist; Illustrator, Artist. It stages tensions between real and surreal, beautiful and grotesque, humorous and serious, to create ruptures, ripples, or distortions that unsettle conditioned and oppressive ways of being. Processes are grounded in scientific, historical, and personal research—mining memory and childhood alongside social and pedagogical influences—to insist on complexity and expanded imaginaries.
Obadah Aljefri is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist and designer rooted in long-term investigations into identity and perception across queer, Muslim, and diasporic experience. Their conceptual practice integrates painting, sculpture, installation, performance, and illustration with satirical, abject, and tender gestures that trouble the violences of the gaze. Holding an MFA in Integrated Practices from Pratt Institute and a BFA in Illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design, they bring over ten years of experience in art production, art direction, illustration, and branding across art, design, fashion, and marketing. Aljefri has worked on major exhibitions with Muhannad Shono, Jenny Polak, and Andrew Woolbright, and has exhibited internationally at Ithra, the Bronx Council on the Arts, 21,39 Jeddah Arts, and Volta Basel.
