Rehaf Al Batniji is a self-taught photographer and visual artist based in Gaza City, Palestine, who has participated in several local and international exhibitions. Most recently Al Batniji Awarded the Institute of France X Cité internationale des arts residency programme. Al Batniji is also a member of Dahaleez Art Collection. 

She has shown her work during several exhibitions being collective, “What Palestine brings to the world  (Insitute le monde  Arabe) and Particpated (AWAN festival), (Jaou Tunis festival, October 2022) or solo (A fable of the sea in Institut francais de Gaza, october 2022). Her work was featured in the September 2022 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique magazine.She also participated in a residency program at FilepaManuela in Madrid (Dec 21- Feb 22). 

Her first solo exhibition was in the backyard (Al Hakoora) of her house in Gaza City in 2020. Previously, Al Batniji has collaborated with several organizations including Qattan Foundation (Palestine), Goethe (Palestine), Institut francais de Gaza (Palestine), Institut français de Tunis (Tunis), Kamel Lazaar foundation (Tunis), Darat al Funun (Jordan), Cairo Photo week (Egypt), Gulf Photo Plus (United Arab Emirates). 

A self-taught artist, Rehaf Al Batniji also paints and draws, and works as an educator teaching photography to Youth and Adults for different institutions in Gaza. 

In her photographic practice, Al Batniji is interested in street photography as she feels that the street is a portal through which she learns about the lives, cultures and identities of the people who dwell in her city. She feels that the streets have the power to represent the culture of a country, both the light and dark sides, and that photography has the power to do the same. 

A native Palestinian, Batniji has lived through four major conflicts in Gaza through which she continued to produce work in various contexts and incorporating different mediums. Her work is imbued with social purpose yet with refreshing positivity, Rehaf Al Batniji’s photography reject’s the brutal imagery of conflict and instead use color as a tool for resistance to reflect the vibrance of life in Gaza. She has developed a unique and personal visual language through her intimate observations of details in the landscape and the beauty found in its relationship to the people populating it.