Bashar Alhroub was born in Jerusalem in 1978 and currently lives and works in Ramallah. He graduated with a BA in fine arts from Al-Najah National University, Palestine, in 2001. He was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship to pursue an MFA, which he completed in 2010 at the Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, United Kingdom. In 2012, Alhroub was awarded the first grand prize at the 14th Asian Art Biennial in Bangladesh.
Alhroub works with a variety of media, including photography, video installation, drawing, silkscreen printing, and painting. His work addresses the polemics of place, questioning its role in humanity and its influence on creativity. His practice is deeply shaped by socio-political conditions that assert identity and the desire to belong to a cultural and social community. More recently, his work has engaged with the search for the self. Using the body as a signifier, he explores threatened self-identity through processes of experimentation. His work addresses vulnerability and existential anxiety associated with religion, nationalism, conflict, and identity construction, seeking meaning not in isolated symbols but within contexts of exile and fragmentation.
Alhroub’s work is part of international museum and institutional collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Imperial War Museum, London; the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah; the China Printmaking Museum, China; the Bengal National Gallery, Bangladesh; the Birzeit University Museum Collection, Palestine; Omi Art Centre, New York; the Michael Abbate Collection, New York; the Bank of Palestine Collection, Palestine; Contemporary Art Platform Kuwait; and the Dalloul Art Foundation in Beirut.