User:Dsyassin/sandbox

Laila Shawa’s first show outside of the Middle East, Women and Magic, was in London in 1992. She did not begin to find international acclaim until 1994, when she collaborated with Mona Hatoum and Balqees Fakhro in a show titled Forces of Change: Artists of the Arab World at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. Her most well-known work in the 21st century is 2010’s Walls of Gaza III, Fashionista Terorrista, which is a screen print originating from Shawa’s photographs. The photo shows garments, a scarf and a sweater, which symbolize the Palestinian resistance decorated with a Swarovski crystal New York patch to visualize how the people of the west use the Arab struggle as a fashion statement. In 2012 at London's October Gallery, Shawa's show "The Other Side of paradise” opened, about which she stated: “In The Other Side of Paradise, I explore the motivations behind the shahida—the Arabic term for “female suicide bomber”—a question that few people would likely choose to consider. The core of the shahida model revolves around a troubling confusion of eroticization and weaponization. In this installation, I sought to assign to each aspirant an identity and wholeness that would otherwise be denied her in the routinely horrific media reports of female suicide bombers in Gaza.”