Laila Shawa

This presentation marks the first Austrian exhibition of pioneering Palestinian artist Laila Shawa (1940–2022), who attended Oskar Kokoschka’s School of Seeing in Salzburg between 1960 and 1963. Curated by Jakub Gawkowski, the exhibition delves into Shawa’s cross-cultural visual language marked by erratic forms and intense colors that challenges traditional narratives of the West and the Rest through what has been termed “Islamo-pop,” commenting on complex, politically fraught subjects with a vibrant palette and image repetition. 

In collaboration with TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki Szczecin, where the exhibition will be presented in Autumn 2025.

Laila Shawa (*1940, Gaza – ✝2022, London) received her first formal training at the Leonardo da Vinci Art Institute in Cairo in 1957–58. In 1958–64, she studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, spending summers with the artist Oskar Kokoschka at his School of Seeing in Salzburg. After concluding her studies, Shawa returned to Gaza to supervise arts and crafts education in refugee camps for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and entered into an informal apprenticeship with the UN war photographer Hrant Nakasian. In 1967, she moved to Beirut, where she stayed for nine years as a full-time painter. With the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War, she returned to Gaza, where, for the next decade, she collaborated on the design and construction of the Rashad Shawa Cultural Centre. From 1987 on she took up residence in London and lived there until her passing.

Image: Laila Shawa, Coke Is It (Walls of Gaza II series), 1994, courtesy of Laila Shawa Estate.