Samah Shihadi was born in 1987 in Sha’ab village, western Galilee. She’s a graduate of Haifa University’s MFA program and The Oranim College Bachelor of Fine Arts and Education program. Shihadi participated in Solo (The Gallery for Contemporary Art, Uhm El Fahem, the Machanaim Gallery) and group exhibitions, among which was “Galilee Paint 2” where she won the Best Upcoming Artist award. Shihadi was also awarded the Mif’al Hapais Prize, the Ministry of Culture’s Young Artist prize, and prizes for excellence from Haifa University and Oranim College. Some of her works are found in important private collections around the world.
Shihadi’s drawings offer a visual standpoint toward some of the central issues confronting the artist. They deal with the complex inter-relations between the internal place – the self, and the documenting, frozen, obliging drawing, sharpening the tension between these two poles, and the feelings of having to set the hierarchy between the personal and professional, the individual and the social. Shihadi’s works also bring to the front the power balance within the family between man and woman, and mediate it through the continuous action of drawing, which in turn enables the artist to articulate her own stance and bring to bear the separate parts of a society largely patriarchal controlled by desires, which oppresses the individual and subdues him to control and indoctrination.