Fatma Shanan

Fatma Shanan was born in 1986 in Julis

Fatma Shanan was born in 1986 and grew up in the Druze village of Julis. Her elementary school offered no art courses, so as a child she took private art lessons.

From 2007 to 2010 she studied visual arts at Oranim Academic College in Kiryat Tivon. She then studied painting with the artist Elie Shamir in his studio for a year.

Shanan paints realistic oil on canvas works, often based on staged photographs of family and friends, mostly taken in Julis. Oriental carpets, valued objects in Druze culture, are a central theme, and she uses them to explore identity, tradition and her place as a woman in her community. She has also painted self-portraits, including one showing her floating above a carpet.

She has held solo exhibitions at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery, and her works are in the collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. She won the Haim Shiff Prize for Figurative-Realist Art in 2016 and the Ministry of Culture's Young Artist Prize in 2017. She lives and works in Julis and Tel Aviv.