Curator and Artist Panel: The Lost Paintings

Aya Abu Hawash

Aya Abu Hawash is a Palestinian multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, mixed media, and archival research. She holds an MFA from Université Libanaise – Institut des Beaux-Arts (2016) and is completing postgraduate studies at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Her work explores how intimacy clashes with brutality, with figures and landscapes reflecting the fluidity of relationships and instability during crises. She questions how intimacy in Arab culture functions through hidden archives. Aya is currently a resident at Cité Internationale des Arts and is developing Archives of Desire during her 2025 residency at La Chartreuse, Avignon.

Iman Jabrah

Iman Jabrah holds a BFA in New Media from the New Kentucky University School of Art, an MFA from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhuo, and was awarded the Lin FengMian Bronze Award at the prestigious Zhejiang Exhibition Hall. Jabrah touches on themes of women, migration, grief, danger, care and healing– often working in found materials that imbue with her life experiences. She has exhibited internationally, served as Researcher-in-residence at the Praksis and Peace Research Institute of Oslo, and received the Artwave Truth and Reconciliation Grant to curate a show at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Fouad Tomb

Fouad Tomb is a Lebanese artist and educator currently residing in Montreal, Canada. He comes from a family with a strong artistic background, notably his father, Maroun Tomb, a Lebanese painter of Palestinian descent, who made significant contributions to pictorial modernism in Lebanon. Tomb’s artistic journey was inspired by his father’s passion for art. He lived in various places, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia during the Lebanese Civil War. Eventually he and his family emigrated to Canada, seeking opportunity and freedom. It was in Montreal that he was able to rekindle his passion for painting by pursuing a formal arts education and training in the techniques of the Great Masters.

Mary Tuma

Mary Tuma is a Palestinian-American visual artist working primarily in fibers. Her work investigates issues of identity through the subject of Palestine via the body, spirit and place. Her use of fabric and other fiber-based materials references women’s traditional work and voice, women’s bodies and memory. Tuma works sculpturally and in installation form. She holds an MFA from the University of Arizona, and has taught art at the university level for over 28 years. Tuma has shown work internationally and her work has been acquired by private and public collections around the world.