Portraits of Resilience Series

Oil on canvas (2021 - 2024)

Portraits of Resilience is a series of figurative paintings portraying the faces of Palestinian children. The works focus on stillness, expression, and gaze, allowing each subject to occupy the frame without narrative instruction or symbolic excess.

Rather than illustrating trauma or spectacle, the series emphasizes presence as an act of endurance. The restrained treatment of form and surface invites prolonged looking, encouraging viewers to encounter resilience not as heroism, but as a quiet, sustained condition shaped by lived reality.

Through the intimacy of portraiture, the series resists simplification and sentimentality, insisting on dignity, individuality, and humanity beyond representation.