ABOUT
Rania Lee Khalil makes performances and moving image for live audiences. Her artworks reflect on the beauty and disappearance of indigenous plant, animal and human (culture)s. Her embodied art practice reflects on anticolonial ecology, third world feminism, revolution and healing, through lo fi and analog technologies.
Originally trained in dance, somatic movement and Butoh, Rania brings a sense of quiet and movement to her and moving images. She is the daughter of Egyptian immigrants to the US who have since
returned to Cairo, where she also lived from 2007-2016.
Rania’s original works have been seen in places including The Judson Church, La Mama Galleria, Martin Segal Theater, Utopia Station and The Ontological-Hysteric Theater in New York; Aomori Art Museum Japan, Al Ma’mal Contemporary Art Foundation Palestine, Zawya Cinema Egypt, Kiasma Museum for Contemporary Art Finland and the 56th Venice Biennale.
Rania holds a practice based Doctorate in Dance and Video from the University of Arts Helsinki, Finland.
Originally trained in dance, somatic movement and Butoh, Rania brings a sense of quiet and movement to her and moving images. She is the daughter of Egyptian immigrants to the US who have since
returned to Cairo, where she also lived from 2007-2016.
Rania’s original works have been seen in places including The Judson Church, La Mama Galleria, Martin Segal Theater, Utopia Station and The Ontological-Hysteric Theater in New York; Aomori Art Museum Japan, Al Ma’mal Contemporary Art Foundation Palestine, Zawya Cinema Egypt, Kiasma Museum for Contemporary Art Finland and the 56th Venice Biennale.
Rania holds a practice based Doctorate in Dance and Video from the University of Arts Helsinki, Finland.
Awards include Kone Foundation (Finland), CIMO foundation (Finland), Erasmus Mundus (Europe), Fund for Women Artists (US), Zebra Poetry Film Festival (Germany), Bay and Paul Foundation (US), Merce Gilmore Foundation (US), Gibney Dance Moving Toward Justice Fellowship (US), New York Foundation for the Arts (US) and Women in Theatre and Media Award (US)
Rania lives and works within the stolen territories of the Munsee and Canarsie peoples, colonially known as Brooklyn, NY. She is the mother of one daughter.
Education: Rania attended Simon's Rock Early College of Bard and completed her B.A. at Hampshire College. She has two Master's degrees; the first in community organizing and family therapy from Hunter College School of Social Work in New York City,
and a second Masters in International Performance as Research from the University of Warwick, England. Her doctoral practice based research focused, materially on her embodied relationship with video making and somatic dance. Her intellectual research during the making of her Third World Ecology Trilogy focused on postcoloniality, the systemic dismantling of African revolutions in the 1960’s and 70’s and themes of environmental justice in Egypt and Palestine today.
In addition to her degrees, she completed postgraduate training in the Diversity Fellowship program at Ackerman Institute for the Family (to train queer and BIPOC therapists once excluded from mainstream clinical practices). Rania’s creative praxis is deeply informed by this experiential training into the overlap of the “personal” with political structures of oppression and liberation.
Rania lives and works within the stolen territories of the Munsee and Canarsie peoples, colonially known as Brooklyn, NY. She is the mother of one daughter.
Education: Rania attended Simon's Rock Early College of Bard and completed her B.A. at Hampshire College. She has two Master's degrees; the first in community organizing and family therapy from Hunter College School of Social Work in New York City,
and a second Masters in International Performance as Research from the University of Warwick, England. Her doctoral practice based research focused, materially on her embodied relationship with video making and somatic dance. Her intellectual research during the making of her Third World Ecology Trilogy focused on postcoloniality, the systemic dismantling of African revolutions in the 1960’s and 70’s and themes of environmental justice in Egypt and Palestine today.
In addition to her degrees, she completed postgraduate training in the Diversity Fellowship program at Ackerman Institute for the Family (to train queer and BIPOC therapists once excluded from mainstream clinical practices). Rania’s creative praxis is deeply informed by this experiential training into the overlap of the “personal” with political structures of oppression and liberation.
Contact
ranialeekhalil
[at] gmail [dot] com
Listening
McFadden & Whitehead:
Ain’t No Stoppin Us Now
“ if you’ve ever been held down before, i know you refuse to be held down anymore!”