Laila shawa quotes
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Laila Shawa
Palestinian artist (1940–2022)
Laila Shawa (4 April 1940 – 24 October 2022),[1] was a Palestinian visual artist whose work has been described as a personal reflection concerning the politics of her country, particularly highlighting perceived injustices and persecution. She was one of the most prominent and prolific artists of the Arabic revolutionary contemporary art scene.[2]
As a Palestinian living in the Gaza Strip for her formative years and the daughter of Rashad al-Shawa, activist and mayor of Gaza City, Shawa's revolutionary mindset was inculcated at a young age. Often her artwork, which included paintings, sculptures, and installations, worked with photographs that served as the base for silkscreen printing. Her work has been internationally exhibited and is displayed in many public (e.g. The British Museum) and private collections.[3][4][5]
Early life
Laila Shawa was born on 4 April 1940 in Gaza, Mandatory Palestine,[6] eight years prior to the 1948 Nakba and the founding of the Stat
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01 Work, MIDDLE EAST ARTISTS, The Art of War, Laila Shawa’s Target 2009, with footnotes
Sold for £ 6,000 in Jun 2009
Target 2009 was created as a direct response to the tragically high death toll amongst Gaza’s children due to Israeli military assaults earlier in 2009. A variation of the iconic Target (1992) from Shawa’s Walls of Gaza I silk screen series, it is also related to Targets (1994) from Walls of Gaza II created after the Oslo Accords. Favoured by the media, the image has since been reproduced countless times internationally. Whereas Targets (1994) illustrates by repetition the escalation of the political situation after the watershed agreements in 1993, Target 2009 refocuses on the individual child shyly lifting his hand and reluctantly signing for peace. Although the work nominally commenced in 1990, almost two decades on its message is poignantly contemporary. More on this painting
Laila Shawa (Born Gaza 1940) graduated summa cum laude in Fine Arts from the Italian Accademia di Belle Arti in 1964 and received a diploma in plas
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LAILA SHAWA
Shawa’s formal art education was at the Leonardo da Vinci School, Cairo and the University of Rome’s Academy of Fine Arts. She also attended the School of Seeing in Salzburg, established by Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka. In 1964, back in Gaza, she supervised arts and crafts education for UNWRA while working with the documentary photographer Hrant Nakashian. She co-founded the Rashad Shawa Cultural Centre. As an artist, Shawa’s concern is 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 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 focussed on the heart-rending messages of hope and resistance spray-painted, by the ordinary people of Gaza upon the walls of their city.
In 1994, October Gallery first s
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