Bio
Haifa Bint-Kadi holds an M.F.A. from Istituto d'Arte per il mosaico in Ravenna, Italy and has been designing and fabricating public art mosaics since 1993. She says she is obsessed with maps and cartography is always an aspect of many projects. Haifa’s most recent commission is from the Children’s Museum of Manhattan to design and create an installation for their 2014 Muslim Cultures exhibit. In 2012 Haifa completed The Eel’s Journey, a large-scale in-ground public art mosaic for Groundwork Hudson Valley and the City of Yonkers’s daylighting of the Saw Mill River which will serve as a focal point of Yonker’s new development. In 2010, Bint-Kadi received the award to complete a sculpture park for the State of New York at Suny Oneonta symbolizing the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. "This sculpture symbolically represents Pangaea, the seven continents once being connected," says Bint‐Kadi. The park includes 12 large structures with mosaic skin representing the weaving patterns of indigenous people from around the world and a solar light pathway throughout the Quad area of the sculpture park.
In the summer of 2012, Haifa successfully completed a social engagement way-finding project awarded by Create Change which culminated in an in-ground mosaic pathway from South Yonkers down to the Hudson River waterfront. Haifa also received extensive training in conducting social engagement projects. Some of Bint-Kadi’s public art projects include a large glass installation called, Rain, which signifies the importance of clean water and the cyclical, but fragile nature of the water cycle, a toddler park called, Trains, Planes and Automobiles for the City of Yonkers, two permanent mosaic murals at the Hudson River Museum, a 92 sq. ft. mosaic mural and sculpture garden of the Palisades and Hudson River for the Riverview Condo Towers, and a 24 sq. ft. mosaic mural portraying Henry Hudson’s exploration of the Hudson River at the Peekskill Train Station and over 75 public art mosaics created in residency with teachers and students installed in public places throughout in New York.
“My work involves working closely with community in developing public art projects that reflect the community’s interests, history and perspectives using a constructivist model to engage the public in the Big Idea of community and in making connections to the environment. I call this work, Resurrection History. I believe public art should be accessible to the public and not simply because it’s installed in a public space, but because the artist has engaged the public through research, history and the discourse the public art inspires. I’m only interested in projects that engage the public in authentic ways.”
In addition to Bint-Kadi’s public and community engaged art, she works as a teaching artist and conducts professional development for teachers in numerous New York and New Jersey School districts.
Artist Statement
I was born and raised in New Jersey, but my Arab heritage has influenced the construction of my identity and often in relation to the concept of Other. So then, the Self and the Other are simultaneously inseparable. My small works often seek to bridge east and west, confound stereotypes of Arab and Muslim women while deconstructing the Islamic iconography so often connected to representations of Muslim women. I address the social aspects of representation, particularly in relation to the Muslim female, exposing the hidden layers beneath that which is visible. It’s a strategy to break with dominant iconography by offering an alternative narrative.
My work explores issues of gender equality, identity, cultural scrutiny and socio-political scenarios that construct representations of the Other. I intensely examine how image language can resist and also create representations while transcending boundaries and oversimplified understandings of what it means to be “western” vs “eastern.” I do this by constructing alternatives to typical Middle Eastern iconography. For example, my Hamza hands references a recognizable hand form, but deconstructs the iconography by loading in a narrative of found objects, mosaic acting as vessels containing a timeline of my psychological and emotional states and the tension between my past and present. They contain the objects of my daily life and document my desires, acting as a point of departure from typical orientalist representations to self-described meaning. The the idioms that I work within are culturally rooted, but I explore how that manifests when one is multicultural. I can only defend my own aesthetics and vision, but at the core of my work is an attempt to use nontraditional materials and forms to blur the boundaries between East and West.
My public art is founded in my essential themes of Resurrection History in which I seek to excavate from the community their insights, voices and interpretations of the space the public art will inhabit. For example, cultural and religious icons can create unifying symbols by which immigrant communities can collectively identify, but they can also be limiting and exhausting. I try to cultivate a contemporary narrative of place that comes to life in every public art commission.
In the summer of 2012, Haifa successfully completed a social engagement way-finding project awarded by Create Change which culminated in an in-ground mosaic pathway from South Yonkers down to the Hudson River waterfront. Haifa also received extensive training in conducting social engagement projects. Some of Bint-Kadi’s public art projects include a large glass installation called, Rain, which signifies the importance of clean water and the cyclical, but fragile nature of the water cycle, a toddler park called, Trains, Planes and Automobiles for the City of Yonkers, two permanent mosaic murals at the Hudson River Museum, a 92 sq. ft. mosaic mural and sculpture garden of the Palisades and Hudson River for the Riverview Condo Towers, and a 24 sq. ft. mosaic mural portraying Henry Hudson’s exploration of the Hudson River at the Peekskill Train Station and over 75 public art mosaics created in residency with teachers and students installed in public places throughout in New York.
“My work involves working closely with community in developing public art projects that reflect the community’s interests, history and perspectives using a constructivist model to engage the public in the Big Idea of community and in making connections to the environment. I call this work, Resurrection History. I believe public art should be accessible to the public and not simply because it’s installed in a public space, but because the artist has engaged the public through research, history and the discourse the public art inspires. I’m only interested in projects that engage the public in authentic ways.”
In addition to Bint-Kadi’s public and community engaged art, she works as a teaching artist and conducts professional development for teachers in numerous New York and New Jersey School districts.
Artist Statement
I was born and raised in New Jersey, but my Arab heritage has influenced the construction of my identity and often in relation to the concept of Other. So then, the Self and the Other are simultaneously inseparable. My small works often seek to bridge east and west, confound stereotypes of Arab and Muslim women while deconstructing the Islamic iconography so often connected to representations of Muslim women. I address the social aspects of representation, particularly in relation to the Muslim female, exposing the hidden layers beneath that which is visible. It’s a strategy to break with dominant iconography by offering an alternative narrative.
My work explores issues of gender equality, identity, cultural scrutiny and socio-political scenarios that construct representations of the Other. I intensely examine how image language can resist and also create representations while transcending boundaries and oversimplified understandings of what it means to be “western” vs “eastern.” I do this by constructing alternatives to typical Middle Eastern iconography. For example, my Hamza hands references a recognizable hand form, but deconstructs the iconography by loading in a narrative of found objects, mosaic acting as vessels containing a timeline of my psychological and emotional states and the tension between my past and present. They contain the objects of my daily life and document my desires, acting as a point of departure from typical orientalist representations to self-described meaning. The the idioms that I work within are culturally rooted, but I explore how that manifests when one is multicultural. I can only defend my own aesthetics and vision, but at the core of my work is an attempt to use nontraditional materials and forms to blur the boundaries between East and West.
My public art is founded in my essential themes of Resurrection History in which I seek to excavate from the community their insights, voices and interpretations of the space the public art will inhabit. For example, cultural and religious icons can create unifying symbols by which immigrant communities can collectively identify, but they can also be limiting and exhausting. I try to cultivate a contemporary narrative of place that comes to life in every public art commission.
