Dana Lixenberg
Amman, Jordan
Peace Building through Dialogue and Play
The Syrian civil war that began in 2011 has exacted a heavy toll on hundreds of thousands of children and their families and created a dramatic refugee and displacement crisis that has affected millions of people and spilled into neighbouring countries. The influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan has strained already overburdened structures and services, resulting in increased tensions between refugees and the host communities in which they live.
Generations For Peace (GFP), with headquarters in Amman, addresses these conflicts by engaging children, young people and adults across Jordan in a variety of activities, including sport-based games, arts, advocacy and dialogue. Here, Syrian refugees come together with Jordanians from the host communities. Dedicated to sustainable conflict transformation at the grassroots level, GFP empowers volunteer youth leaders to promote active tolerance and understanding through programmes that offer safe spaces for positive engagement with others, in communities experiencing different forms of conflict and violence.
Biography
(b. 1964, The Netherlands) Lixenberg studied photography at the London College of Printing from 1984 to 1986, and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam from 1987 until 1989. The series Imperial Courts 1993–2015, her most extensive body of work to date, was awarded the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2017. Lixenberg has exhibited at Aperture, New York (US); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (NL); Centre Photographique, Rouen (FR); MMK, Frankfurt (DE); The Photographer’s Gallery, London (UK); Busan Biennale (KR); Huis Marseille, Amsterdam (NL); Kunsthal, Rotterdam (NL); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (NL); FOAM, Amsterdam (NL); Frans Halsmuseum De Hallen, Haarlem (NL); and LACP, Los Angeles (US).
She has the ability to capture her subjects in profound moments of temporal being; and in doing so, she engages in analytical scrutiny without imposing judgement. The artist’s subtle and sophisticated feel for colour and her sensitivity for capturing the finest indications and details of human expression are striking in each of her portraits. This is evidenced in her extensive project Imperial Courts, 1993-2015, which tracks the changing shape of a small, underserved community in Watts, Los Angeles, through a combination of video, a web documentary, audio recordings, and a series of 393 black and white photographs taken with a large format camera. Jeffersonville, Indiana (2005) shows a collection of landscapes and portraits of the small town’s homeless population, and The Last Days of Shishmaref (2008) documents an Inupiaq community on an eroding island off the coast of Alaska. Furthermore, she has had an extensive editorial practice working for publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vibe and Newsweek. The power of her work arises in the intimacy and the absence of social stereotyping.