Laila Shawa
A native of Gaza, Laila Shawa (Layla Shawwa) is an oil painter, a silk-screen artist, and an illustrator of children's books who has also done sculpture. She studied in Cairo, at two arts academies in Rome, and in Austria with Oskar Kokoschka. She has also worked on United Nations children's art programs in Gaza. Shawa's famous silk-screen installation Walls of Gaza (1992 - 1995) exemplifies her ongoing interest in political struggle and oppression, and in children who live with war and deprivation. Her photographs of children and graffiti-laden walls in Gaza are juxtaposed on large panels to make the viewer confront the effects of conflict and violence on generations of children. Other works examine breast cancer as a metaphor for other eruptions and invasions, such as the 1991 Gulf War, and atomic bombs, linking the body with the land - a strategy adopted by other Palestinian artists. Shawa's paintings on a variety of subjects, including the restrictions on Middle Eastern women, are reminiscent of Henri Rousseau in style and color. Her works have been exhibited throughout the Middle East, in England, and in the United States.
background...
Laila Shawa graduated summa cum laude in Fine Arts from the Italian Accademia di Belle Arti in 1964 and received a diploma in plastic arts from the Accademia San Giacomo in Rome. From 1965 to 1967 she returned to Gaza to teach arts and crafts to underprivileged children. She now lives and works in London. As a Palestinian artist, Shawa is concerned to reflect the political realities of her country, becoming, in the process, a chronicler of events. Her work is based on a heightened sense of realism and targets injustice and persecution wherever their roots may be. The initial impetus for a piece often comes from her own photographs, which are later transformed by means of silkscreen printing techniques. The written word is often present in her work, as in the acclaimed 'Walls of Gaza' series (1994), which focused on the heart-rending messages of hope and resistance spray-painted, in defiance of Israeli censorship, by the ordinary people of Gaza upon the walls of their city. Her work has been exhibited in Italy, Germany, Austria, the UK, in most Arab countries, North Africa, Iraq, Russia, China, Japan, Malaysia and USA. She is represented in public and private collections across the world, including the National Galleries of Jordan and Malaysia, and the British Museum in London.
Bibliography
Ali, Wijdan. Modern Islamic Art: Development and Continuity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997.
Lloyd, Fran, ed. Contemporary Arab Women's Art: Dialogues of thePresent. London: Women's Art Library, 1999.
Shawa, Laila. Laila Shawa Works 1964 - 1996. Cyprus: MCS Publications, 1997.