Laila Shawa

Laila Shawa (1940 to 2022) was a Palestinian artist who worked in painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture and installation in London. Born in Gaza, she addressed the political realities of Palestine, occupation and injustice. Women and the veil, children and violence, and female suicide bombers were recurring subjects. She often started from her own photographs and transformed them through silkscreen printing. Text often runs across the image.

She trained in Cairo and then Rome, where she studied under Renato Guttuso. She also took Oskar Kokoschka's summer courses in Salzburg. From 1967 she spent about nine years painting in Beirut. The Impossible Dream (1989), from the Women and the Veil series, shows veiled women unable to eat ice creams. Walls of Gaza drew on graffiti that people in Gaza sprayed on its walls during the First Intifada. Walls of Gaza II (1994) is a set of 12 lithographs. Disposable Bodies (2011 to 2013) dressed headless shop mannequins with rhinestones, feathers, an ammunition belt and dynamite. Where Souls Dwell (2012) is a decommissioned AK-47 decorated with rhinestones, butterflies and a gold-sprayed barrel.

Her solo shows included Women and Magic at The Gallery, London (1992). In 2000 the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, gave her a solo show, In the Name of God: Crucifixion 2000. She showed The Other Side of Paradise at October Gallery, London (2012). Group shows included Forces of Change, which opened in Washington DC (1994), and Word into Art at the British Museum (2006). Her Walls of Gaza lithographs appeared in the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022). Solo shows followed at the Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, and TRAFO, Szczecin, in 2025. Her work is in the collections of the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, the Barjeel Art Foundation and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art.