When you next visit Hiba, any of our three branches, you will see some striking artwork from several highly talented Palestinian artists.
The pictures are courtesy of @soukpalestine a project by @servexps startup which works on delivering high-quality arts and handicrafts to the British market. It operates from Clapton & Ramallah!
You can see more of this fantastic work online: https://goo.gl/3YQvsu. Here you can also buy several of the pictures as postcards.
Portrait With Oranges by Sliman Mansour
Sliman Mansour
Born in 1947, Birzeit, Palestine, Sliman Mansour studied fine art at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem. He has held solo exhibitions in Ramallah, New York, Sharjah, Cairo, Gaza and Stavanger, Norway. His group exhibitions include Museum of Oriental Art, Moscow (1980), Palestinian Spring, Al-Hakawati Theatre, Jerusalem, 1985; New Visions, Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, 1991; Made in Palestine Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, 2003; and Contemporary Graphic Art in the Arab World, Nabad Gallery, Amman, 2010. In 1998 he received the Palestine Prize for the Visual Arts at the Cairo Biennial.
Sliman Mansour draws inspiration from the subject of the olive tree, and has focused on the theme of ‘land’ since 1970. His recent work is centred on the individual figure to convey the ‘different states of exhausting anticipation or loss,’ resulting from his experience of living under the occupation.
Nostalgia by Nabil Anani
Nabil Anani
Nabil Anani (b.1943, Latroun, Palestine) is one of the most prominent Palestinian artists working today. He is considered by many as a key founder of the contemporary Palestinian art movement.
On graduating in Fine Art from Alexandra University, Egypt [in 1969], Anani returned to his native Palestine and began a fruitful career as an artist and a teacher trainer at the UN training college in Ramallah. Anani held his first exhibition in Jerusalem in 1972 and has since exhibited widely in Europe, North America, the Middle East, North Africa and Japan – both as an individual artist and with groups of his Palestinian contemporaries.
Anani is a multi-talented artist, for he is a painter, a ceramicist and a sculptor. He pioneered the use of local media such as leather, henna, natural dyes, Papier-mâché, wood, beads and copper. Over the past four decades, Anani has built an impressive catalogue of outstanding, innovative and unique art.
Anani was awarded (by Yasser Arafat) the first Palestinian National Prize for Visual Art in 1997 and became the head of the League of Palestinian Artists in 1998. On retiring from his teaching post in 2003, Anani has dedicated much of his time to voluntary pastimes, leading on the League’s activities and playing a key role in the establishment of the first International Academy of Fine Art in Palestine – with the assistance of the University of Oslo and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Hosni Radwan
A graduate of the prestigious Fine Arts College of Baghdad in 1978.
Hosni Radwan is an incredible academic talent as a painter and a graphic designer, and has a career of almost 30 years.
The list of the international solo exhibitions that Radwan has taken part of is too long to outline but includes major exhibitions in Tunis, Tokyo, Nicosia, Jerusalem, Kuwait, Belgium, Moscow, Cairo, Jakarta, Sharjah, Canada, New York, Qatar, and Italy.
His depiction of quirky and unusual symbols from daily life such as a fly or a bouquet of flowers not only showcase his impressive sketching skills, but also suggests an extraordinary power of observation.
Al Sham Rose by Hosni Radwan
Rana Samara
Rana Samara (born 1985, Jerusalem) is a Palestinian artist and a graduate of the International Art Academy, Ramallah (2015).
Samara’s current body of work – Intimate Space – explores societal norms, sexuality, gender roles, and other factors associated with modern Palestinian life. Her work focuses on the less obvious factors that underpin the daily lives of women who reside in overcrowded refugee camps and rural communities – women whose lives continue to be blighted both by conservative traditions and the exigencies of life under occupation.
Focusing on marital intimacy, Samara demystifies many social taboos and translates these onto large, bold and colorful canvasses that are both remarkable social statements and beautiful artistic constructs. Frank conversations with women form the backbone of her work that transcends the private space into the realm of the public. Often depicting the aftermath of sexual encounters, Samara’s paintings are remarkable visual metaphors of the lives of Palestinian women existing in restricted environments, cramped and constrained by internal traditions and by external forces.
Samara is a highly inquisitive, courageous and determined woman. These characteristics propelled her – in the first place – to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art as a mother of three children from a conservative background. Her passion for art and formidable determination has led her to pursue further studies and she is currently undertaking a two-year MA in Fine Art and Theory at Northwestern University, Chicago, while being estranged from her family.
Samara has participated in exhibitions in Ramallah, Jerusalem, Lebanon, Jordan and France.
Intimate Space XIV by Rana Samara