Laila Muraywid

Abstract

Laila Muraywid is a Syrian-French artist born in 1956 in Damascus, Syria. She trained in etching in Damascus (1979–1981) and graduated from the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (1981–1986). Her multidisciplinary work employs various media, including etching, photography, sculpture, jewellery, and drawing, to tackle questions related to the social and political role of women in society.  Violence, suffering, fear, cruelty, and the cycle of life (birth and death) are some of the themes she addresses through the lens of war, vulnerability, taboo, and tension.

Biography

“I come from war,” confessed Laila Muraywid during an interview. The artist grew up with her family in Lebanon and fled the country when the Lebanese Civil War started in 1975. She travelled to England at the age of 20, where she says she had her first real encounter with art in museums. She drew inspiration from paintings, pictures, and sculptures, searching for female artists but ultimately finding none. Upon her return to Damascus, her hometown, she studied etching at the Kulliyat al-Funun al-Jamila - Jami'at Dimashq (the Faculty of Fine Arts attached to the University of Damascus) from 1979 to 1981. The search for female artists led her to publish articles on women artists in the journal Al-hayât al-tashkîliyya (The Life of the Visual Arts).

Muraywid organised her first solo exhibition at the Markaz al thaqafi al Arabi- Dimashq (Arab Cultural Center in Damascus)  in 1979, which would prove to be a pivotal moment in her work. The series of drawings featured scenes of intimacy expressed in an unsettling strangeness to re-question our relation to the world, desarticulated humans, crucified figures, dislocated dolls—obscene and disturbing violence for Syrian society, unaccustomed to such imagery. During this period, she also exhibited her etching work at the Mathaf al Watani fi Dimashq (National Museum of Damascus) during the Salons d'Automne as well as in annual exhibitions. She spent time in old Damascus, in the butchers’ quarter, observing and studying the hanging carcasses, the smell of which haunted her.

In 1981, she moved to Paris to study at the École des Arts Décoratifs. Arriving in a new country where she did not speak the language, she discovered a new understanding of the world and of others: unable to communicate through language, she found other ways to express herself, through body language and gestures. She also began to see women's bodies in a different light, which became the primary focus of her work. She explored the dichotomy between how women see themselves and how others, especially men, see them. While still studying, she produced a set of etchings and photographs of women from magazines, mixed with meat and flesh. She exhibited this series as part of a solo exhibition entitled Contemporary Icons in 1986–1987 in Paris at the Al Mutanabbi space (Mission of the League of Arab States to UNESCO). The exhibition text, written by the poet Adonis, captures the ambivalence of the question of empathy that still runs through the artist's work today: “It is as if her work was telling us: if you want to see the truth, you too must suffer and be torn apart.” This is the truth of the reality of the contemporary world: violent, scarred by wars and conflicts, and dominated by men and their totalitarian policies, who treat women either as muses or as flesh.

“When I articulate the body, and especially the female body, I am articulating fear, anger, love, sex, and shame—all that is hidden and forbidden,” 1 says the artist. Beyond the interwoven and even contradictory emotions that form a narrative arc throughout her work, the notion of what is shown and what is concealed is another underlying theme in Muraywid's work, especially in her sculptural and jewellery pieces. The artist creates sets of sculpture-jewels that are worn during performances, serving as either jewellery or armour, a mask, or a shield. The sculptural object does not serve as decoration but is a way of attracting while protecting—provoking a form of attraction-repulsion. These sculptural jewels have been featured in performances and exhibited several times at the Musée Galliera, the fashion museum in Paris. She also collaborated with haute couture houses such as Torrente, for which she designed, under her name, a jewellery collection in 2001.

This sculptural jewellery worn by women played a role in her photographic work. She participated in Le Corps Découvert exhibition at Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris in 2012 with sculptural and photographic works where the human body is an object of desire but also bears the weight of women's social role: giving life. “Real women, adorned with bandages and jewellery, enclosed by a social mask, visible or invisible, locked into the role of a silent maternal icon,” writes the artist.

Driven by dichotomies, Muraywid repeatedly brings vital concepts into confrontation: emotions and reason, public and private, visible and invisible, mind and body. These dualities demonstrate that objects are not meant to be seen from a single angle, but rather through different prisms, which is what her sculptural work encourages us to do. In 2014–2015, she started a series of artist books in collaboration with Etel Adnan, Adonis, and Venus Ghata-Khoury, where each poet wrote their poems by hand. After that experience, she says, “I started to write myself as a subject, using my four languages (Arabic, English, French and drawing), to venture out of the personal fears into an imaginary space where the sender and the recipient is me. More than using language to communicate, I indulged in torturing, stretching, distorting, the four languages.”

The figure of the doll, the puppet, the (dis)articulated and dismembered marionette draws us into another layer of our relationship to the body. This is the case in The Red Shoes, an exhibition held at the Nadine Fattouh Gallery in Paris in 2024. The artist presented a series of drawings depicting an intoxicating and at times gruesome dance of frenzied bodies. Once again, dominant-dominated relationships and the notion of impulse and movement are prominent themes.

Living in Paris since 1981, Laila Muraywid pursues her committed political work there. The revolution, followed by the war in Syria, the rise of totalitarianism around the world, and the threat of dictatorships, continue to endanger women, their bodies, and their individual freedoms; all these factors reinforce Laila's commitment to the struggles she has constantly fought as an artist and as a woman. Her work can be found in the collections of international museums, from the British Museum in London, the Musée Galliera and the Arab World Institute in Paris to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Jordan, and in foundations such as the Dalloul Art Foundation, the Atassi Foundation, and the Khaled Shoman Foundation, as well as in private collections.

Performances

Flowers of the Body (performance and exhibition), 2005, Galerie Pièce unique, Beirut, Lebanon
Jardin Ouverte (performance and exhibition), July 8, 2004, Musée Galliera, Paris, France
Flowers of the Body (performance and exhibition), 2004, [solo] 4 Walls Gallery, Sheraton, Amman, Jordan
Typographies for a Bride (performance and exhibition), [solo], 2003, Hôtel Bedford, Paris
Creation of the jewelry for the entire Torrente Haute Couture Collection, summer 2001, on behalf of Laila Muraywid
Fashion show and exhibition (with the participation of Romi Loch-Davis, clothing design), 2000, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris
Jewelry performance, December 15, 1997, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris

Collections

Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon
Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, Jordan
The Khalid Shoman Foundation – Darat Al Funun, Amman, Jordan
Atassi Foundation for Arts and Culture, United Arab Emirates
The British Museum, London, United Kingdom
Damascus National Museum, Damascus, Syria

Bibliography

Adonis, Text published in the exhibition catalog, Icônes contemporaines, Espace Al Mutanabbi (Mission de la Ligue arabe – Unesco), Paris

Ayoub, Mathilde, « Paris, 1967 and after? » Text published in the exhibition catalog Arab presences, Modern art and décolonisation, Paris, 1908-1988. Musée d’Art moderne de Paris, 2023

Asalia, Nour, An interview with Laila Muraywid, Atassi Journal, 2025

Cannone, Belinda,  “Inside the Barbarian Queen’s Treasure Chest” in cat. Exp. Prières aux pierres précieuses, Galerie Isabelle Subra Woolworth, Paris, 2019

Cardinal, Philippe, Makram-Ebeid, Hoda (dir.), Le Corps découvert, cat. exp., Institut du monde arabe, Paris (27 mars – 26 août 2012), Paris, Hazan, 2012

Cotter Suzanne, Contemporary Art in the Middle East, Londres, Black Dog Publishing, 2009

De Colnet, Madeleine, Laila Muraywid, Aware Women Artists, Paris, 2025

Eyemazing, Susan, The New Collectible Art Photography, Thames & Hudson, London, 2013

Mikdadi Nashashibi, Salwa, Forces of Change. Artists of the Arab World, cat. exp. The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (7 février 1993 – 15 mai 1994), Lafayette/Washington, D.C, International Council for Women in the Arts et National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1994

Roz, Wafa, DAF interviews Laila Muraywid, Dalloul Art Foundation, (Vidéo, 2022)

Contemporary Art in the Middle East, Black Dog, London, 2009.

Exhibitions Catalogues

Les souliers rouges, (texts of Morad Montazami and Nadine Fattouh) cat. exp, Galerie Nadine Fattouh, Paris, 2024

Personal Revolutions, Alserkal Avenue, Atassi Foundation, Dubai 2019

Syria: Into the Light, Alserkal Avenue, Atassi Foundation, Dubai, 2017

Laila Muraywid, Coreografie delle illusione, Spazio Cesare de Sesto, Sesto Calende, 2014

Traits d'union. Paris and Contemporary Arab Art, Art Absolument, Paris, 2011

Laila Muraywid, Jardin de nulle part, French Cultural Center, Damascus, 2010 (Texts: Eric Chevallier, Adonis, Erica Wagner)

Laila Muraywid, All Masks Have Faces, Galerie Imane Farès, Paris, 2010

Co-incidences, Galerie Imane Farès, Paris, 2010 (Text: Gilles de Bure).

Laila Muraywid, Comme un jardin j’attends le monde, Musée des Dentelles et Broderies, Caudry, France (Texts: Claire Catoire, Praline Gay-Para).

Laila Muraywid, Blood Deeper than Shadows, Green Art Gallery,  Dubai, 2009. (Text: Haig Aivazian)

Mediterraneo: A Sea That Unites. An Exhibition of Works by Artists from the Mediterranean Coastal States, (Texts by Rossana Pittelli and Gabriele Magnani), Italian Cultural Institute, London, 2008

Lifting the Veil: Women Artists in the Land of Islam, Wijdan Ali, Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, al-Mathaf, 2005

Other and Same: Triangles, French Cultural Center of Casablanca, Wafabank Foundation, ECUME, Casablanca, 1994

Laila Muraywid: "The Contemporary Icon," paper, Paris, Galerie Ch. Marquet de Vasselot, 1990 (Text: Asaad Arabi).