13 Facts About Laila Shawa

Laila Shawa's work has been described as a personal reflection concerning the politics of her country, particularly highlighting perceived injustices and persecution.

Laila Shawa was one of the most prominent and prolific artists of the Arabic revolutionary contemporary art scene.

Laila Shawa was born on 4 April 1940 in Gaza, Mandatory Palestine, eight years prior to the 1948 Nakba and the founding of the State of Israel.

Laila Shawa was well-educated; she attended boarding school at the Leonardo da Vinci Art Institute in Cairo from 1957 to 1958, then went to the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma in Rome from 1958 to 1964, while studying during the summers at the School of Seeing in Salzburg, Austria.

In 1965, after finishing her schooling, Laila Shawa returned to Gaza and directed arts and crafts classes in several refugee camps.

Laila Shawa then continued to teach an art class for a year with UNESCO's education program.

Laila Shawa then moved to Beirut, Lebanon in 1967 for a total of nine years and was a full-time painter.

The painting is from Laila Shawa's series called Women and Magic that reconnoiters a common practice of magic and witchcraft in the Middle East.

The women in the painting are veiled, and in an interview with Muslima, Laila Shawa explained how the veil is what she terms as a Bidaa, something which was introduced to Islam, but has nothing to do with Islamic teachings rather than a sociopolitical spectacle created to subdue women.

Laila Shawa's first show outside of the Middle East, Women and Magic, was in London in 1992.

Laila Shawa did not begin to find international acclaim until 1994, when she collaborated with Mona Hatoum and Balqees Fakhro in a show titled Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC.

For Laila Shawa, this was no foreign object, but rather a quite common one in the West Bank.

Laila Shawa died on 24 October 2022, at the age of 82 in her home in London, United Kingdom.