Amal Abdenour Nablus - Val-de-Marne, 1931-2020

Amal Abdenour was a visual artist of Palestinian origin whose practice developed across painting, electrography, and installation. Trained in classical techniques, she emerged at the turn of the 1970s as a pioneering figure in both Copy Art and Body Art through the experimental and diverted use of one of the first photocopiers in France. Over a decade, this medium became central to her work, allowing her to articulate a radical exploration of the body, identity, exile, and political engagement.

Born in Nablus, Palestine, in 1931, Amal Abdenour was the youngest of five siblings. In 1948, at the onset of the Nakba, her widowed mother relocated the family to Cairo, leaving behind their land and agricultural livelihood. After completing her secondary education, Abdenour enrolled at the Zamalek School of Fine Arts, where she came into contact with key figures of modern Egyptian art, including Ramses Younane and Inji Efflatoun, founders of the Art et Liberté movement. During this period, she also met the painter William Ishaq, who introduced her to Marxist thought and the communist youth circles active at the time.

In 1952, amidst political repression under the Nasser regime, Amal Abdenour, her twin brother Souhail, William Ishaq, and many other intellectuals were arrested. Amal and Souhail were imprisoned for two and a half years in the Citadel prison in Cairo, an experience that profoundly shaped her artistic and political consciousness. Following her release in 1955, she participated in exhibitions presenting works produced during her incarceration—paintings marked by overt political content and informed by contemporary Western figurative traditions.

After a period in Libya, Amal Abdenour settled in Paris in 1962, where she chose to continue her artistic training. She attended evening drawing classes organized by the City of Paris and entered the École des Beaux-Arts, joining Albert Lenormand’s studio. She graduated in mural, fresco, and mosaic painting, while simultaneously engaging with emerging artistic movements and new forms of expression.

The social and political upheavals of the late 1960s prompted a decisive shift in her practice. In 1970, she encountered what she would later describe as the machine—the photocopier—which radically transformed her work. For nearly a decade, electrography became her sole medium. Through black-and-white and later color self-portraits produced on RanXerox machines, she developed a body of work that positioned her among the pioneers of Copy Art and Body Art in France and internationally.

Her electrographic self-portraits present fragmented, distorted, and reassembled bodies, articulating a persistent inquiry into identity, exile, gender, and self-representation. The body—exposed, multiplied, and freed from moral constraint—becomes both subject and site of resistance. From the mid-1970s onward, her practice increasingly extended into the public sphere, moving from Copy Art toward Poster Art and Slogan Art.

In 1977, Amal Abdenour was awarded a studio in Nogent-sur-Marne, where she created an environment marked by the signs and materials of conflict—stones, sand, bamboo—transforming the space into a permanent memorial of war and displacement. Her work once again assumed an explicitly political dimension, as she took her posters into the streets to affirm her Palestinian identity and militant stance.

Amal Abdenour’s work has been exhibited in numerous institutions, including the Palais de l’UNESCO, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Maison de la Culture de Rennes, and the Enseigne des Oudin. Her work is also the subject of renewed attention through recent research and its inclusion on AWARE – Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions, contributing to the reassessment of her pioneering role in the history of experimental and political art practices.

She passed away on 8 November 2020, at the age of 89, leaving behind a body of work that stands at the intersection of experimental practice, political commitment, and the lived experience of exile.