User:Labro1cj/Helen Zughaib

Helen Zughaib

Helen Zughaib (born 1959) is a painter and multimedia artist living in working in Washington, D.C.. She was the daughter of a State Department civil servant. Her family left Lebanon in 1975 due to the outbreak Lebanese Civil War, and moved to Europe as a teenager, attending high school in Paris. She studied at Northeast London Polytechnic School of Art. She moved to the United States to study visual and performing arts at Syracuse University graduating in 1981 with her BFA. After graduating she took a job designing china which led to her developing her unique painting style. She uses gouache as her primary medium, but also creates mixed media installations. Her themes are centered around hopefulness, healing, and spirituality, using visual arts to shape and foster positive ideas about the Middle East.

Artworks

Zughaib illustrated Kaleel Sakakeeny’s “Laila’s Wedding” published in 1994.

Zughaib’s work has been purchased by the United States government to be given as gifts to foreign leaders. In 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave Moroccan King Mohamed V Zughaib’s interpretation of the Washington Monument during Clinton’s trip to Morocco. In 2010 President Barack Obama presented Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki with Zughaib’s painting “Midnight Prayers” during the Prime Minister’s visit to the White House.

Zughaib's work comments on cultural identity, family life, the plight of refugees and displacement in the Middle East, the Arab Spring, and the Lebanese Civil War. Her notable series of twenty-three paintings titled "Stories My Father Told Me," for example, is based on the folks tales and family history that her Lebanese father has told her over the years, and includes numerous stories of migration and displacement. The complete series was shown at the Arab American National Museum in 2015.

Her 2019 “Syrian Migration Series” shown at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery in Washington, DC was inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s 1940 “Migration Series.”

Zughaib's style combines a variety of art historical references and influences including post-Impressionism and pop art with Islamic art motifs of geometric patterns and floral arabesque.Her work can be found in many notable collections, such as The White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, and the Arab American National Museum. She has had over 20 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Middle East.