The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis presented Saj Issa alongside Basil Kincaid and Ronald Young in the Great Rivers Biennial 2024, on view from 6 September 2024 to 9 February 2025. The biennial gives three artists working in or connected to the region a museum platform and an unrestricted award of twenty thousand dollars each.
For the show, Issa, a Palestinian-American artist who works between painting, sculpture, ceramics and video, presented Plein Air Performance, a video piece running four minutes and thirty-five seconds. The museum's account of her practice described it as reading the Palestinian landscape through environmental, historical and contemporary lenses, with the video extending a body of work built from clay, paint and cast objects that trace agricultural motifs, domestic architecture and olive cultivation back to Palestine.
Issa lives between St. Louis and Ramallah, and the museum framed the biennial selection as recognition of work concerned with belonging and home while honouring Palestinian culture and flora. Saj Issa's inclusion places this video piece alongside her wider practice with Tabari Artspace, marking a significant United States institutional showing in her trajectory.
