In Rana Samara’s Intimate Space, we witness what appears to be a typical domestic scene, but on closer inspection, small details reveal telling clues – lingerie peeks out from beneath rumpled sheets, belts hang from the bedstead, a half-used pack of Viagra lingers – signs which tell a story of what has gone before, the desultory evidence of intimacy. These bedrooms are familiar domestic spaces, but in Samara’s paintings, they are transformed into repositories of social neuroses and taboos that the artist both seeks to scrutinize and demystify. Virginity. Intimacy. Sexual desire. Gender. Social norms. These issues, so pertinent in both the female realm and the society at large, are often hidden, unexplored, or even dismissed at an artistic level in the context of a nation still struggling under years of military occupation.

Her artwork affirms the feminist conviction that the personal is the political. Intimate spaces are translated into large-scale canvases, and continuous frank conversations with women become the backbone of her work, transcending the private sphere and placing it in the realm of the public. Samara’s work challenges these notions of not only what women can discuss but what issues are valid in society as she invites the viewer to intrude in the daily lives and experiences of women towards greater empathy and understanding.

The light and playful mood of her paintings also demand our reconsideration of these sites of intimacy as a place of shame. For her, issues of sex and sexuality must become public discourse, and so public engagement is of utmost necessity. For Virginity Handkerchiefs groups of men and women were invited to consider their understanding of a tradition whereby a blood-stained handkerchief must be presented as ‘proof’ of a woman’s maidenhood on her wedding night by producing their own ‘virginity’ handkerchiefs. In doing so, the barrier between the private and the public is dissolved and thus the artwork and its creative process become a site of candid discussion and analysis of social norms.

As a multidisciplinary artist, Samara’s works embrace diverse mediums such as film, video installation, sculpture, embroidery, and painting. Mundane household objects are reclaimed – handkerchiefs and oven mitts – and a story in the ordinary materializes, one that alludes to both the female wisdom that influences her practice and the ‘suffocating [female] roles’ that she witnessed as a child growing up. Samara is one of Palestine’s finest young talents with work that bridges many disciplines. Her commitment to art, subject matter, and social issues pushes the boundaries of society’s conventions and progresses her work from an exploration of the self into an awakening of dialogue born from personal and collective experience.