Arab Women Artists Now Festival

Dima Nashawi: Nashawi is a Syrian artist who believes that art goes hand in hand with
social activism and is a powerful means for peace building. Her life and work journeys
have taken her from Damascus, to Amman, to Beirut, and now London, where she is studying
Art and Cultural Management at King’s College. With a BA in Sociology, Nashawi
also studied Fine Arts in Syria. Her work experience began as an art illustrator-animator
for magazines and online children sites; but, later, she took on social work with the UN-
HCR to help refugees in Damascus, who came from Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, Iran and
Iraq. Due to the war in Syria and found herself in Beirut working again with refugees,
this time with children and using art as a means of healing. Nashawi’s illustrations are
delicate, feminine, intricate and with many times a fairytale element to them. They reflect
on her personal experiences so far, her travels around the Middle East and always engaging
with the deeper subject of human rights around the world.
Nasreen Shaikh Jamal Al Lail: Raised between Saudi Arabia and the UK, with an MA in
Photography, Al Lail seeks to find solace through her art where agendas of identity, self
and space are the tools of her practice. Her personal experiences have shaped the way
she perceives fluidity and dynamism of cultural identities. Her art attempts to understand
how interactions between collective memories of different cultures create a unique set
of problems for the individual. She has been exhibited in the UK and Saudi Arabia and
is also one of the Founders of Variant Space, a platform for emerging women Muslim
artists living in the UK seeking a discourse through the visual arts.
Hania Zaazoua: Zaazoua is an Algerian designer, visual artist and stylist. She is a graduate
of Fine Arts and is the Design Director at Bergson & Jung in Algiers as well as having
established her own interior design brand called ‘Brokk’Art’ in 2012. Zaazoua draws
her inspiration from her wanderings, whether real or virtual, to create work that is an
invitation to a teasing journey of the almost trivial dream world to exploring an alternative
version of the society that she lives in.
Takwa Barnosa: Barnosa is a young Libyan artist who is currently studying for her
Bachelors in Fine Arts at the University of Tripoli. She is a very talented calligraphy artist
who is venturing into the fusion of calligraphy with different forms of mixed media. Her
work is a response to her daily struggles as a female living in Tripoli and what this entails.
She seeks solace through her simple depictions of singular Arabic words that become
descriptive of her inner landscape as well as of her surrounding environment.
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