(b. 1987, village of Sha'ab, western Lower Galilee; lives and works in Haifa)

Samah Shihadi brings forth an important, intriguing voice: a fresh, feminine, Galilean, Arab voice, much needed in young Israeli art. Her meticulously realistic drawings pose a constant antithesis to the local ethos of modernist abstract and the nonchalance of the sated center. Shihadi does not have the privilege of engaging with painterly values ​​per se. She has more pressing issues which demand aesthetic representation: the status of women in a patriarchal society; symbols of Israeliness, such as the sabra and the olive tree; remembrance and erasure of the national Palestinian trauma; landscape, land, and home.

Shihadi (b. 1987, village of Sha'ab, western Lower Galilee; lives and works in Haifa) holds a B.Ed. in Art and Education from Oranim Academic College of Education, Tivon, and an MFA from the Art Department, University of Haifa; recipient of the Haim Shiff Prize for Figurative-Realist Art, 2018.

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