Joseph Semah (24.02.1948) was born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1948. From 1950 he grew up in Tel Aviv, Israel. After finishing gymnasium, Semah studied Electronics and Philosophy at the University of Tel Aviv. At the same time he was developing as an artist.
In the mid 1970s Semah made the decision to leave Israel. He refers to this as self-imposed exile. From then on he was a ‘guest’ of London, Berlin and Paris. Since 1980 Semah resides in Amsterdam, where he founded the Makkom Foundation, which in the 1980s organized projects based on interdisciplinary research in the arts.
Joseph Semah’s oeuvre of inextricably connected images and text evidences an impressive search for the meaning of human existence: The relations between man and fellow-man, between the self and the other. An attempt to contribute to mutual understanding and tolerance, combined in his research with insights drawn from religion, science and art.
