Róisín Tapponi

Biography

Róisín Tapponi is an Irish-Iraqi writer, editor, curator and archivist. In 2018, she founded Habibi Collective, a digital archive and curatorial platform for MENA women’s filmmaking. She is also founder and editor-in-chief of ART WORK, a new biannual critical art magazine for marginalised writers, artists and practices. She currently works at The Mosaic Rooms, a gallery in Kensington dedicated to contemporary Arab art.

Tapponi has curated screenings in galleries, festivals and cinemas across the UAE, US, UK, Italy, Sweden and Slovenia, among others. She is currently curating the film programme for the upcoming exhibition Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s at Northwestern University, Chicago, and she has been appointed Film Curator for the annual Seattle Arab Festival in the State of Washington, US. She has lectured on contemporary Arab art in institutions such as Oxford University and the Royal Photographic Society, UK. She has also contributed to a number of publications and platforms, including The Guardian, i-D, Frieze, MILLE World, Yes & No, DATEAGLE ART and Trippin’.

She received a BA in Comparative Literature (with Italian and Arabic) from University College London (UCL) and is pursuing a further career in academia.  Her research is grounded in Arab female essay film and political ecologies.

Born in 1999 in Dublin, Tapponi lives and works in London.

About Habibi Collective

Tapponi founded Habibi Collective in 2018 as an open access resource, digitally archived on Instagram. Now with a bank of over 400 films from female filmmakers in the MENA region and diaspora, she shares a range of documentaries, shorts, experimental moving image, and narrative features. Creating a space for MENA female filmmaking where there previously was none, Habibi Collective has quickly grown into an international community.

Tapponi started curating screenings in institutions, galleries and cinemas across the world because films by MENA women were not easily accessible online. The screenings and related talks have covered a broad spectrum of themes, including climate migration and queer identity. Habibi Collective has also facilitated two festivals: the Queer MENA Online Film Festival (2020) and the Sudanese Experimental Film Festival at the Hypnos Theatre, Malmö, Sweden (2019), with proceeds going towards the Sudan Doctors Fund. Grounding practice in the politics of production, Tapponi works closely with her network of visual artists and filmmakers to ensure that their work is justly presented within the arts industry. 

Habibi Collective has received extensive press coverage in publications such as i-D, MOJEH, Frieze, Freunde von Freunden and MILLE World, among others.