Ali Qleibo is an artist, anthropologist, and author. A Jerusalemite Palestinian Arab Muslim, his books and artwork have taken him all over the world. Although a thin line separates the Renaissance man from the dilettante, Dr. Qleibo successfully straddles multiple categories as a professor, author, ethnographer, and artist. He received his BA, MA, and PhD from Temple University in Philadelphia (United States), was a visiting professor at Tokyo University (Japan), and has taught at Al-Quds University. A prodigious ethnographer, he has produced numerous articles for This Week in Palestine over the past twelve years, and five books that form a veritable encyclopedic archive of Palestinian intangible heritage and its roots in ancient Semitic civilization. His expertise in esoteric Islam and Jerusalem’s spiritual heritage has led him to lecture in Europe and Japan, and he was the Muslim specialist at the Hartman Institute. His political and cultural interventions on television and radio, and his participation in many documentaries both locally and internationally, have made him a well-known public figure. He has served for over seven years on the board of trustees of the YMCA in West Jerusalem. During the past 15 years – and in conjunction with Al-Quds University Research Center and St. George College – he established the itinerary for Muslim tourism in Jerusalem and diverse heritage tours in the West Bank. As an artist, he has enriched the Palestinian cultural scene over the past 30 years, mounting art exhibitions almost annually that include oil paintings, photographs, or multimedia ethnographic installations. A world traveller, Qleibo encompasses in his cultural experience both Far Eastern and Western civilizations. The order of accumulated experiences on the artistic and academic levels serves as an indicator of Qleibo’s commitment, dedication, and seriousness: Dr. Ali Qleibo is a veritable Renaissance man.
♦ Jerusalem’s sacred, historic, magical allure continues to inspire innumerable images. Qleibo states: “I apprehend the Palestinian environment from a Palestinian perspective. As I write or paint, I appropriate my landscape and inscribe on it my Palestinian identity. My paintings symbolize the Palestinian landscapes, with the result of being a total political appropriation of the visible world.”
Documentation and representation of the homeland have an important part in Qleibo’s literary and artistic imagination. “The narratives I use in making sense of the Palestinian landscape both help to create and are structured around the concept of identity,” he explains,“and it is through this interrelationship that my literary and art works acquire their sense of place, and, corollary to that, they construct my sense of Palestinian identity. My paintings and writing in this sense are quintessentially nationalistic and political, discursively confirming the Palestinian identity of our cultural heritage and landscapes.”
A doting father, Qleibo enjoys travelling and taking countryside rides and nature hikes with his daughter Aida, his mother, and his spouse Elena. Cooking and listening to music (both classical Arabic and European) are his passion. Gardening and pruning his citrus trees and rosebushes are among his hobbies.
