Zahi Khamis

Born and raised in the Palestinian village of Reineh outside of Nazareth, Zahi Khamis moved to the US in the early 80’s. He holds a BA degree in Mathematics from San Diego State University, and an MA in Liberal Studies from Loyola University in Baltimore. Zahi taught mathematics in public schools for 16 years. Since 2008, he has been teaching at Goucher College.

Zahi has been painting and exhibiting for many years. His work has appeared in numerous publications and in solo, juried, and cultural exhibits, including shows at the United Nations, The U.S. Senate, The Palestine Center (Washington D.C) and the Carnegie Institute for Peace. Informed by the Palestinian story, and his own life in exile, Zahi’s work is part of the long tradition of committed art. His bright, optimistic colors combined with the tragic expressions of his subjects express the painful, yet luminous, contradictions of all those who struggle for liberation.

Kim Jensen

Kim Jensen is a Baltimore-based writer, poet, educator, and translator who has lived in California, France, and Palestine. Her experimental novel, The Woman I Left Behind, about a turbulent love affair between a young US student and a Palestinian refugee was a finalist for Forward Magazine’s book of the year. Her two collections of poems, Bread Alone and The Only Thing that Matters, were published by Syracuse University Press. Active in transnational peace and social justice movements for decades, Kim’s work has been featured or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Anthropocene, Modern Poetry in Translation, Decolonial Passage, Transition, Anomaly, Action, Spectacle, International Human Rights Arts Festival, Another Chicago Magazine, Electronic Intifada, Mondoweiss, Extraordinary Rendition: Writers Speak Out on Palestine, Gaza Unsilenced, Bomb Magazine, Al-Jadid, Sukoon, Mizna, Revista el Humo, Left Curve, Liberation Literature, and many others. In 2001, she won the Raymond Carver Award for short fiction. Kim is currently a professor of English and Creative Writing at the Community College of Baltimore County, where she co-founded an interdisciplinary literacy initiative that demonstrates the vital connection between classroom learning and social justice in the broader community.

Ahlam Khamis

Ahlam Khamis is an actor, musician, filmmaker, and multi-media artist. She received her BFA in Acting from CalArts in 2013, and trained in the Meisner technique at the William Esper Studio from 2019-2020. She played classical violin throughout her childhood. In her multi-media art practice, Ahlam utilizes a variety of elements: theater performance studies, research on surveillance of Black and Palestinian communities, research on war technology, dance choreography, video and audio recordings, documentaries, fabric, needles, and thread. She lets a sense of pain, fragmentation, anxiety, and dreaminess
enter into an interplay between all of the above aspects of her work.

Besan Khamis

Besan Khamis is a Palestinian-American artist and fisherman based in Baltimore, Maryland (MICA 2016). His paintings forage the landscape of personal and family memory, blending these elements into realist and surrealist abstractions. His sculptural works follow a similar genealogy; tapping into his own inventory of imagery and the collective subconscious, he uses playfulness to turn the ordinary unexpected, illustrating the thin line that separates comedy and tragedy, while offering an implicit critique of social relations.