Myssa Daher: Eye Wide Open
 

A solo exhibition by Myssa Daher, a young artist born in Nazareth, who graduated in 2014 from the Department of Art at the University of Haifa. 

The exhibition inaugurated the new "Bread and Roses” Gallery, located in the Tel Aviv offices of the MAAN Workers Association.

 

"Eye Wide Open'' featured Daher's works of recent years - paintings on canvas and video works. In both of these media she created new worlds that maintain a complex and surprising relationship between imagination and reality. With the imaginative flexibility of a young child, inventing creatures, worlds, and characters, Daher confronted adult reality and its struggles. Elements from very different times and places have found new and surprising connections. She has used motifs from popular culture, such as ornaments, candy, and figures from animated films; iconographic elements from Palestinian painting and classical Western art; memories and oral histories; media images such as selfies, search-engine pictures, and emojis – all were grist for her mill. 

 

Daher’s artistic activity is full of humor and irony, while at the same time, she confronts weighty social and political issues—gender, for instance, and her position as the member of an ethnic and national minority, alongside questions about the history of painting and its present relevance. Issues of female identity are interwoven with those of Palestinian identity.