Biography
Jumana Jamal El-Husseini was born in 1932 in Al-Quds (Jerusalem). She grew up in the Musrara neighbourhood and was deeply influenced by her family heritage. Her grandfather, Hajj Amin El-Husseini, was a prominent Arab Nationalist and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Her mother was Nimati Al Alami, a floral painter and embroiderer, and her father, Jamal El-Husseini, was a politician and one of the leaders of the Palestinian resistance movement in the 1930s and 1940s. El-Husseini family was forced to seek refuge in Lebanon after the 1948 Nakba, where they eventually settled. In 1953, she enrolled in the Beirut College for Women (now The Lebanese American University) to study political science. Over time, she developed a keen interest in art after taking elective art courses. Despite marrying and having children, she continued her art education. In 1956, she transferred to the American University of Beirut (AUB) to major in art, taking classes under the guidance of prominent teachers at the newly formed Department of Fine Arts. El-Husseini’s early artistic experimentations represent her childhood memories of Jerusalem, portraying mythical and ethereal scenes through arches, circles, lines, and colour divisions across the canvas. These compositions offer a unique perspective among artists of her generation, addressing the brutal reality of displacement but asserting the individual imagination as a fundamental tool to achieve liberation, echoing her art philosophy. She chose not to give titles to her work, often leaving her paintings untitled. Unlike many artists of the first Nakba generation, she avoided using hypernationalistic symbolism that focused on remembering the displacement and genocides. El-Husseini’s work in this period, such as Untitled (Birds of Jerusalem) (1969), reflects a hopeful interpretation concerning the “right of return,” as seen in her choice of motifs and bright colours.
In Lebanon, several prominent institutions have shown El-Husseini’s works, including the Sursock Museum at the Salon d’Automne and Jamiat Bayrut Al-Arabiya (Beirut Arab University).. Her work also appeared in the quarterly journal Shu'un Filastiniyya (Palestinian Affairs) covers, published by the PLO, on postage stamps for Fatah (formerly the Palestinian National Liberation Movement) and UNICEF postcards from the late 1960s and early 1980s. Additionally, she worked for Beirut's United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), which further expanded her work reach to a broader audience. During this time, Beirut had a growing community of exiled Palestinian artists who had recently returned from their formal art studies abroad. Among them were notable figures such as Mustafa al-Hallaj (1938–2002), Laila Shawa (1940–2022), Tamam Al Akhal (b. 1935), her husband and artist Ismail Shamout (1930–2006), Naji al-Ali (1936–1987), among others. However, not all members of this artistic community were featured in the local art scene and galleries. Artist and historian Kamal Boullata attributes this to the different cultural and class structures the artists faced before their displacement; he notes that artists from refugee camps faced challenges in gaining recognition within the Lebanese avant-garde scene beyond those focused on Palestinian liberation. However, this was not a clear case for El-Husseini, who came from a bourgeoisie background. Despite being known to be limited, her involvement with the intellectual scene led her to incorporate the political writings of poets like Samih Al-Qassim (1939–2014) and Mahmoud Darwish (1941–2008) into her practice. One of her paintings, The Spring of Palestine (1970), features a map of her home country, surrounded by birds. She tried to mimic the embroidery styles of the occupied towns in their feather patterns. Inside the map, she wrote an excerpt from Darwish’s resistance poetry. This collage-like technique, which she developed early on, caught the attention of Iraqi artist Issam al-Said (1938–1988) during an exhibition in London. Impressed by her lyrical style, he proposed a joint show, which eventually took place at the Woodstock Gallery in London in 1964, one of her early exhibitions abroad.
In 1967, El-Husseini revisited Jerusalem for the first time after the Nakba. During her visit, which included other cities like Ariha (Jericho) and Yafa (Jaffa), she observed the neighbourhoods and later sketched them. A year later, in 1968, the women-led association was founded in Beirut, of which El-Husseini was a member. She dedicated her artistic knowledge to training the INAASH embroiderers and teaching them designs to ‘write Palestine through stitching.’ The association’s primary goal was to empower Palestinian women living in refugee camps by providing them financial independence through the political knowledge and skill of stitching as an intangible heritage. A painting from 1973, Untitled, skillfully represents one of the roads in Jerusalem called Sitna Maryam, named after Mother Mary, located close to the Church of Saint Anne in Jerusalem. The work depicts palm trees and leaves in bold red and pink colours with a semi-black background, which, according to oral accounts, is believed to be where Mary bathed. A giant bird stands in the centre with dotted feathers and triangles that pair with the street beneath. Above the bathing house, the artist wrote “Hamam Sittna Mariam” (bathhouse of Lady Mary) in a simple font. This painting and the folkloric symbolism subtly convey a feminist meaning for El-Husseini that reclaims the domestic and political.
El-Husseini’s style transformed during the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s, she emphasised the craft aspect by incorporating embroidery and mixed media on paper while continuing her painting practice. The artist also turned to watercolours as materials were inaccessible during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). She found embroidery to be a calming tool for “madness,” referencing her mental state during the war. She reflected on the ongoing turmoil while insisting on using her visual storytelling to convey these events through continuing painting pre-Nakba Palestine. In 1978, she was invited to participate in an exhibition in Tokyo with fellow artist Mustafa al-Hallaj, part of a collaboration between the PLO and The Japanese Asian African and Latin American Association (JAALA). During her travel to Japan, El-Husseini visited Hiroshima, which inspired a painting she created depicting a red snake extending from Japan to Palestine, with visible ruins, as a symbol of solidarity with the Japanese people. In 1982, El-Husseini relocated to Paris during the Israeli invasion again of Lebanon. She established her permanent art studio and began to focus on drawing architectural elements, with the Al-Aqsa Mosque becoming her primary subject. She re-interpreted its circular shape and emphasised its lineage to Arab and Islamic heritage. El-Husseini spent extended periods working in her studio during this time, resulting in a prolific period of production, experimentation, and international exhibition participation.
The artist underwent another significant transformation from 1987 to 1993 during the Intifada, also due to her enrollment in 1990 at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she specialised in stained glass and calligraphy. Her work shifted from using bright colours and figurative elements to incorporating darker tones and more Arabic script, using wood carvings and stones from the Dead Sea. In interviews, she refers to the impact the first seven days of the Intifada had on her practice, seeing the young children resist settler violence using rocks, which filled her with astonishment and hope. Towards the 2000s, she adopted a more straightforward style, focusing on curves, compositions, and abstraction. She also experimented with complex forms and developed a palimpsest method; this involved adding multiple layers of inscriptions on each other to connote the history and civilisation of the Levant. Rather than revealing everything at once, she preferred to keep some parts of the paper hidden, like a reversed archaeologist, as she called it. In her later years, El-Husseini stayed close to the landscapes of her city, filling white space with golden and silver textures in homage to Palestine. El-Husseini’s art reflects similar sociopolitical concerns and artistic ambitions as those of fellow women artists Samia Halaby (b.1936), Vera Tamari (b.1940), and Laila Shawa (1940–2002), who also raised awareness around the Palestinian experience. Jumana El-Husseini died in 2018 in Paris, where she lived and worked. Her work is widely acclaimed, particularly in contemporary embroidery, and holds a significant place within regional liberation movements.
