Strings of the Past

Ameera Al-Hamayda

Born in Gaza, Palestine

Displaced in Al Mawasi

(Khan Yunis)

Since June 2024, Ameera Al-Hamayda has been living and creating work from a tent in Al-Mawasi. She is preparing for an exhibition that will be located in a room in a house in Deir Al Balah, that will be documented and represented as a film. In the early stages of her artistic journey, Al-Hamayda focused on observational paintings of nature, with special attention to color. Her process evolved to include surrealist imagery and portraits of the people around her. Al-Hamayda’s approach to art is free and spontaneous: her subject matter has since shifted to the human body and anatomy, depicting muscles and nerves, and the work now takes from her interest in nature as a frame to look at the human subject. This approach is applied to how she documents her life and state of displacement until today. Biology, memory, and personal hardships converge into works that go deep into the relationship between artistic form and the elements that make up life. At the center of her exhibition is a sculpture of a skull made of concrete, where the corners and memories of a house and everything related to its surroundings are carved, as if, and as it is, in the mind.

Ameera Al-Hamayda was awarded a bachelor’s degree in art education from Al-Aqsa University, Faculty of Fine Arts, in 2023.