Maria Saleh Mahameed / winner of Rappaport Prize for a Young Promising Artist for 2023

Tel Aviv Museum of Art

​We are delighted to announce that artist Maria Saleh Mahmeed is the winner of ‘the Rappaport Prize for a Young Promising Artist’ for 2023.

 “The fabric stories woven in Maria Saleh Mahameed's work are not fiction, they are rooted in her personal life and the life of her family, and in long fabric scrolls spread out on the studio floor. Her monumental paintings wrap the walls of the exhibition space and echo a symbolic language, consisting of archetypal-ancient patterns such as the mother figure, and personal and cultural symbols such as horses, monitors and security cameras. Saleh Mahameed mostly draws with charcoal, an echo of her hometown Umm al-Fahm (Mother of Coal), and leaves on the surface traces of the action of the body on the canvas, the prints of her feet and palms. The drawing installations created from the beginning of her artistic career expand the boundaries of the drawing format, delineate a space of lingering, and allow viewers to assimilate into dream-like hybrid scenes, which at the same time constitute a sober testimony to a divided and complex political and social reality.”

Jury of the Rapaport Art Prize Committee for 2023: Tania Coen-Uzzielli, Mira Lapidot, Dalit Matatyahu, Irith Rappaport, Rivka Saker, Drora Dominey and Adi Goldner

The winner of ‘the Rapport Award for an Established Artist for 2023 is Hannan Abu-Hussein (b.1972) also in Umm el Fahem. This is the first time that the Award is given to two Palestinian women artists ! so well deserved !

Images: artist portrait, ‘The Last Peel’ (Maya Gallery, 2022), Monitor (Artport, 2021), ‘Tangle of Vines’ (Mishkam Museum, Ein Harod, 2020) photos by Lena Gomon and Eitan Mikozky