Artist Talk: Samia Halaby

Palestinian American artist and scholar Samia Halaby has been exploring the visual language of abstraction for over six decades. On the occasion of the presentation Samia Halaby: Kinetic Paintings in the museum’s Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Atrium, join the artist for a talk on her multifaceted career as a prolific painter and pioneer in digital art. Halaby will explore how abstraction continues to influence advancements in picture making. She will also reflect on the nature of abstract art, which as the artist sees it, is an illusion with multiple dimensions and can more accurately describe our reality than other pictorial forms. Following the talk, the artist will be joined by curator and writer Deena Chalabi for a conversation about Halaby’s early influences, artistic vision, and practice as a maker of pictures in various mediums.

Experience Performing Abstraction: Samia Halaby with Members of the Kronos Quartet at SFMOMA on Saturday, April 4, 2026.

About the Speakers

Deena Chalabi is a strategist, curator, and writer based in Oakland. She has served as the founding head of strategy at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar, and the inaugural Barbara and Stephan Vermut Associate Curator of Public Dialogue at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She is an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts, where she teaches graduate seminars in Fine Arts and Visual and Critical Studies.

Samia Halaby (b. 1936, Jerusalem) is a Palestinian American artist and scholar living and working in New York. Her most recent exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial, New York (2026), the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale, Riyadh (2026), and the Hyundai Card First Look: Samia Halaby, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2025). Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Guggenheim, New York and Abu Dhabi; Lenbachhaus, Munich; the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and many other public and private collections. In 2025, Halaby was honored with the MUNCH Award for artistic freedom. In 2024, the jury of the Biennale Arte in Venice awarded her a Special Mention in recognition of her longstanding work.