Lincoln, Neb.--Wesaam Al-Badry will present the Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist lecture on Thursday, Oct. 22 at 5:30 p.m. in Sheldon Museum of Art’s Ethel S. Abbott Auditorium. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Al-Badry is a visual social documentary photographer, long-form investigative journalist and interdisciplinary artist whose practice centers on environmental justice, immigration, labor and the lived conditions of marginalized communities. Working across photography, film, video installation and sculpture, Al-Badry blends long-term documentary engagement with conceptual inquiry, creating work that examines the human and political consequences of American power, both domestically and abroad.
Born in Nasiriyah, Iraq, by the age of seven, Al-Badry witnessed war, displacement and four years in a political prisoners’ camp. By the age of 11, his family had resettled as Iraqi refugees in Nebraska. These early experiences, alongside years spent working in U.S. factories, inform a visual practice grounded in dignity, memory and the structural forces shaping working-class life.
His documentary work addresses environmental pollution, corporate harm, migration and community resilience. At the same time, his conceptual projects explore Orientalism, military simulation, constructed realities and the spectacle of pain as entertainment, critiquing the infrastructures that render human suffering consumerable.
Al-Badry’s work has been exhibited at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City; Joslyn Museum in Omaha; and the Museum of Nebraska Art, among others. His photographs and essays have appeared in “The New York Times,” “Rolling Stone,” “The Atlantic,” NPR, “Fortune,” “Mother Jones,” and more.
He is currently a fellow at The Center for Contemporary Documentation.
The remaining lectures in the series are:
• Oct. 29: Laura Crehuet Berman. Crehuet Berman is a native of Barcelona, Spain, where her love for pattern, design and bold colors originated. Her art is widely collected and exhibited, and her work has been featured in multiple books. As a professor at the Kansas City Art Institute, she has taught printmaking, book arts and color studies since 2002.
• Nov. 12: Rochelle Feinstein. Feinstein, an acclaimed artist and educator and professor emerita at Yale School of Art, will discuss her multi-decade practice and the works featured in “Gender, Genre, Generation,” currently on view at Sheldon, exploring how abstract painting can respond to the cultural, political and media realities of contemporary life.
The School of Art, Art History & Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students. The series is presented in collaboration with Sheldon Museum of Art.
Underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment with additional support from other sources, the series enriches the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design. Each visiting artist or scholar spends one to three days on campus to meet with classes, participate in critiques and give demonstrations.
For more information on the series, contact the School of Art, Art History & Design at (402) 472-5522 or e-mail schoolaahd@unl.edu.
