Lot 275: LAILA SHAWA (PALESTINE, B. 1940)

Children of War, Children of Peace
silkscreen inks on canvas in two parts
each: 39 1/2 x 90 1/2 in. (100 x 230cm.)
Executed in 2001

Another version exhibited in London, British Museum, Word into Art, May-September 2006, (illustrated in colour no.94, p.125)

This two-part work highlights the predicament of children in Palestine, with a small boy wearing only one shoe and holding a stick.

As the artist says: "Unfortunately there has been no change in these children's lives and the trauma and dispossession has carried on. The only apparent difference in the streets of Gaza was the change in the colour of the graffiti, which became brighter. However, the misery, poverty and trauma of violence remained" (Venetia Porter and Isabelle Caussé, Word into Art: Artist of the Modern Middle East, London, 2006, p.125).