BIOGRAPHY
Mohamad Hafeda is an artist, writer and academic based in London and Beirut. His work employs art and architecture practices as research methods to negotiate the politics of urban space, focussing on the issues of borders, refuge, displacement, representation and spatial rights. Through this, Hafeda engages with communities to produce counter representations and spatial alternatives that span urban interventions, media representations, art installations and writings.
Hafeda was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize 2021 in the Visual and Performing Arts category for his work on “socially engaged participatory art”. His interdisciplinary, practice-led research across the fields of urban studies, art and tactical practices of resistence is presented in his most recent book, Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon (Bloomsbury, 2019) and his film Sewing Borders, commissioned by Ashkal Alwan for Video Works (2017), the latter of which was selected for the International Film Festival Rotterdam IFFR (2018) in the Bright Future category, and Queer Lisboa International Film Festival (2018). Hafeda was also the co-author of Creative Refuge (Tadween, 2014) and Action of Street / Action of Room: A Directory of Public Actions (Serpentine Galleries, 2016), and the co-editor of Narrating Beirut from its Borderlines (Heinrich Boll Foundation, 2011).
Through his art collective Febrik, Hafeda develops participatory art and research methods in a series of projects around the topic of ‘play’ and the social ‘playgrounds’, primarily in Palestinian refugee camps in the Middle East. This has led to commissions by the UN for the development of public spaces in camps in North Lebanon (2007–9) and in Jordan (2008–10), building the first area specifically designated to women and children in these spaces. In the UK, Febrik collaborated with The Serpentine Galleries (2015–16) and South London Gallery’s (2010–12) outreach programmes, working with young people and families within the contexts of social housing and migrant communities.
Hafeda is currently a Reader in architecture at Leeds Beckett University, having previously taught design and architecture at Chelsea College of Arts, Westminster University, London Metropolitan University, American University of Beirut and Lebanese American University. He holds a PhD in Architectural Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (2015), an MA in Design for the Environment from Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London (2004), and a BA in Interior Architecture from the Fine Arts Institute, Lebanese University (2001).