Born in Nazareth in 1964, Sharif Waked studied fine art and philosophy at Haifa University, Israel (1983–86). Primarily video, his work critically engages the prejudices, propaganda, and institutional violence that inform Middle Eastern politics. By creating striking juxtapositions between the representations of Arabs and Islam in the media and injustices experienced in reality, Waked reveals the ways that power, politics, and aesthetics are powerfully inscribed on the surface of everyday life. In Chic Point (2003), Waked plays with the intersection of the cultural and political in Palestinian life by investigating the absurd idea of designing fashion for traversing Israeli checkpoints. Set to pulsating electronic music, the video begins on a catwalk where a parade of men model scant clothing designed for interrogation. The gratuitously exposed flesh alludes to the strip searches that Palestinians regularly experience at border crossings. This reference is made explicit as the video transports the viewer from the catwalk to the West Bank and Gaza through a series of stills showing these violent searches. Examining the sexualized gaze of fashion within a political framework, the work satirically signals the body as a charged site of cultural victimization. Waked’s unexpected inversions of Middle Eastern cultural tropes is further developed in To Be Continued... (2009), in which he presents a solitary man in military garb seated before a banner displaying Arabic text framed by the image of two assault rifles, purposefully re-creating a suicide bomber’s farewell video. Yet rather than zealously declaring his ideology, the man calmly recites stories from A Thousand and One Nights. This epic compilation of folktales is structured around the story of Scheherazade, who marries the Persian king Shahryar who murders each of his brides after their wedding night. To break this cycle and save her life, Scheherazade tells the him a riveting story each night but leaves the ending for the following evening, thus perpetually deferring the king’s vicious act. In Waked’s video, art becomes a powerful antidote to violence, with literature replacing political speech as a means to interrupt the suicide bomber’s act of terrorism. By wittily drawing contemporary politics into dialogue with traditional culture, Waked disrupts the viewer’s expectations and stereotypes of the Middle East. Waked has had solo exhibitions at Wolverhampton Art Gallery, United Kingdom (2014); Galeria Wschodnia, Lodz, Poland (2014); and Gallery One, Ramallah, Palestine (2015). His work has also been featured in a number of group exhibitions, including the Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates: Provisions for the Future: Past of the Coming Days (2009); The Deutsche Bank Series at the Guggenheim: Found in Translation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2011); Navigations: Palestinian Video Art, 1988–2011, Barbican, London (2012); Terms and Conditions, Singapore Art Museum (2013); Arab Contemporary: Architecture, Culture and Identity, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2014); Kubri al Hamir, Kallio Kunsthalle, Helsinki (2014); Arab Cultural Association Center, Haifa, Qalandiya International: Manam (2014); and Fire and Forget, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015). He lives and works in Haifa and Nazareth.