Hadia Gana is a female artist and ceramicist of Lybian and French origins. She was born in 1973 in the Libyan capital Tripoli. Her art is not limited to sculptures and installation artworks but comprises also furniture and pottery.
After graduating in Ceramics and Glass Making from the University of Tripoli, she received a Master’s degree in Ceramics from Cardiff University. She later began to work as an art teacher in primary and secondary schools in Libya. In 2010, Hadia Gana obtained an Arts Residency at the Thami Mnyele Foundation in Amsterdam. During the same year, she also participated in the re-design of the Libyan Pavilion inside the Shanghai Exposition. During the 2011 Revolution she was active on her blog with posts such as‘40 Years of Running on the Same Spot: A Libyan Diary’.
She is renowned especially for her installation pieces “Zarda” and “Tripoli Pebbles”, which, by giving voice to the precarious socio-political situation in Libya after the revolution, aimed at promoting social criticism and at raising awareness of the challenges faced by Libya.
In 2012, she took part in the Noon Arts’ exhibition “The Libyan”, held at the Arab British Centre in London, where her works were highly praised. Then, she participated in several international exhibitions in the U.K., Lebanon and France.
In 2013, her life-long plan to open a place for cultural interaction among artists came to life with the “Ali Gana Foundation” in Tripoli, erected in memory of her late father, himself a well-known Libyan artist.
Among Hadia Gana’s preferred materials is clay, which reminds her of her childhood. Also, she likes to compare the spiritual facets of clay with human beings, as she believes that it is from clay that we are born.