John Halaka

John Halaka (born 1957) is an Egyptian-born American visual artist, documentary filmmaker, and Professor of Visual Arts at the University of San Diego in California. He is considered an expert in painting, drawing, photography, documentary filmmaking, oral history, and modern and contemporary Palestinian art.

Education and publications Halaka was born in El Mansoura, Egypt, in 1957.

He has taught at the University of San Diego since 1991. He has also been interviewed for and profiled in journalistic and academic reports on contemporary Arab art.

John Halaka (top right) among artists at the California African American Museum in 2009.

Artistic works Halaka's artwork has been exhibited in Michigan; California; Alaska; Washington, D.C.; Palestine; Spain; and the United Kingdom. He was featured in the inaugural exhibit of the Arab American National Museum. He also participated in the ongoing "I Witness Silwan" mural project in Batan al Hawa and contributed to the major exhibition (and subsequent book) The Map Is Not the Territory: Parallel Paths—Palestinians, Native Americans, Irish (2013).

He is past recipient of a Fulbright award to Lebanon, where he conducted oral history interviews among Palestinian refugees of multiple generations. He was also awarded a U.S. Scholar fellowship from the Palestinian American Research Center for 2018–2019 for his project Vanishing Harvest: Meditations on the End of Palestinian Agriculture.

Halaka is one of the artists who has created works for the I Witness Silwan art installation in East Jerusalem.

Select bibliography

"Sketches from the Margins of Marginalized Communities: Lessons in survival, resilience and resistance acquired from Palestinian refugees," in Migration Across Boundaries: linking research to practice and experience, edited by Parvati Nair and Tendayi Bloom (2016).