Abed Abdi
Abed Abdi is a Palestinian visual artist, and the chief curator of the Art Colony, who resides and works in Haifa.
Born in 1942 in Haifa (Mandate Palestine), Abed Abdi witnessed the Palestinian Nakba at age six when he and his family were forced to leave Haifa and seek refuge in the camps of Lebanon and Syria in 1948. They were allowed back to the homeland in 1951 following a family reunification request by his father, who had remained in Haifa despite the war.
Abdi graduated in 1972 from the Fine Arts Academy in Dresden, Germany, where he was tutored by leading German artists and befriended notable figures such as Lea Grundig, a Jewish holocaust survivor and the student of Käthe Kollwitz, known for depicting the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II. Lea served as Abed Abdi’s supervisor and teacher at the Academy.
Abdi is renowned for his artworks depicting the Palestinian Nakba and the refugee experience, and for creating the Land Day Monument, the first memorial monument in historical Palestine to commemorate the victims of land expropriation protests, in collaboration with his Jewish friend and colleague Gershon Knispel.
Abed Abdi has received the highest honours both in Palestine and in Israel, and is an honorary citizen of the city of Haifa. He also received an honorary mention by the Anna Lindh Foundation in 2008 for his role in fostering intercultural dialogue in the Euro-Med region. Abdi’s artworks have found their way into the art collections of various museums worldwide, including the British Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art and many more.
