Jumana Manna

Jumana Manna was born in 1987 in Princeton

Manna was born in 1987 in Princeton, New Jersey, to a Palestinian family from Majd al-Krum. She grew up in the Shuafat neighborhood of Jerusalem. She holds U.S. and Israeli citizenship and lives in Berlin.

She studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem from 2005 to 2006. She earned a bachelor's degree at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and a master's degree in aesthetics and politics at the California Institute of the Arts.

Manna works in sculpture, installation and film, combining history, ethnography and documentary. Her 2015 film A Magical Substance Flows Into Me deals with Robert Lachmann and the music of communities in Jerusalem. Her film Wild Relatives follows seeds from Syria to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and back to Lebanon.

Her work was shown at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Her film Foragers looks at how Israel's protection of za'atar and akkoub affected Palestinians. From 2022 to 2023 she held the exhibition Break, Take, Erase, Tally at MoMA PS1.

In 2026 a work commissioned from her by the Norwegian government for the rebuilt government quarter drew controversy, because she meant to dedicate it to the Palestinian struggle.