Laila Shawa
The mother of Arab revolutionary art
The world lost “the mother of Arab revolutionary art” when painter Laila Shawa died in London in October at the age of 82. Born into activism—her father was the prominent Palestinian politician Rashad al-Shawa—Shawa grew up amid the turmoil of the creation of Israel and the displacement of Palestinians, known as the Nakba, or the Catastrophe. She chose art as her language of resistance, using techniques of Pop art, such as repetition and colour, to direct attention to her anguished political messages.
In her 1965 painting Gaza—now in the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation—cactus leaves writhe across the canvas, their fierce thorns outnumbering the small cluster of delicate flowers blooming in the centre of the work. The cactus has become a symbol of Palestinian people: resilient, sturdy, and patient. This early work paved the way for a career that was concerned with highlighting the political realities of Palestine and to convey a defiance against the injustices her people suffered.
Shawa moved to London in the late 1980s and had her first solo show outside of the region in 1992. But it was in 1994, in her mid-50s, that she rose to international acclaim with two milestones. The first was a collaboration with Mona Hatoum and Balqees Fakhro in an exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, called Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World. The second was her Walls of Gaza series, which incorporated photos and messages spray-painted by Gazans on the walls of their city. After that, to inspire the younger generation, Shawa began to incorporate elements of pop culture into her work, perhaps most notably in Fashionista Terrorista (2010). This work is a screen-print of her photograph of a Palestinian fighter whose face is covered by a traditional keffiyeh but whose sweatshirt is decorated with a Swarovski crystal apple, symbolising New York. In Where Souls Dwell (2019), she transformed a decommissioned AK-47 assault rifle into art featuring rhinestones, butterflies and a gold barrel.
