Young Gaza artist’s surrealist paintings transcend borders
Painting by Reham Amawi
One of the best-known works of Reham Amawi, a 24-year-old artist from the Gaza Strip, is the portrait of Yasser Mortaja, a cameraman who was killed by Israel in 2018. Amawi drew the portrait of her friend on a dark canvas while standing at Gaza’s border with Israel — to the east of her hometown Rafah — during the Great Return March on April 8, 2019.
Today, the young artist says she spends eight hours a day drawing in her small, silent studio far away from the chaos of central Rafah. Most of her paintings concern the situation in Palestine.
Amawi owes her interest in art to the cartoons she’s watched since she was seven. Her favorites ranged from “Tom and Jerry” to “Siraj,” Palestine’s home-grown educational series. “Cartoons stimulated my imagination and led me to drawing at the age of seven,” she told Al-Monitor. “Art was my favorite subject at school — I just wished I could be in an art class all day rather than take other courses.”
While studying arts and handicrafts at the University College of Applied Sciences, she decided to paint in a surrealist style, often incorporating Palestinian symbols — horses and olive trees — into her paintings. “I chose this school of art because it has an unorthodox outlook toward reality. Very few painters use it — though it is very impactful,” she said.