Amira Ziyan
Year of Birth: 1977
Place of Birth: Yarka
Place of Residence: Yarka

Amira Ziyan was born in the Druze village Yarka to a religious family of twelve children. Her father, Qassem, owned a concrete factory and was a dominant figure in the life of the family. So much so that after his death his room remained as he left it, even his clothes where he had hung them, as if his family was waiting for him to come home from work (1). The father’s presence, as well as the sense of his absence, are strongly palpable in Ziyan’s personal memories. Loyal to her father’s way of life and belief system, purity and family honor are a central theme in Ziyan’s work, accompanying her, as she notes, since childhood. She says that she remembers nothing of her childhood, and only focuses on the present. According to Gilad Ophir, who in 2018 curated her first exhibition at the Umm el-Fahem Art Gallery, her memory is deceptive, as if every time anew a veil descends which removes, conceals, erases or stores the past in her subconscious (2). He finds contradicting feelings and desires in her works: on the one hand a desire to preserve tradition and a sense of belonging, and on the other hand a desire to break through the barrier of repression, which verges on a sense of displacement.   

Amira Ziyan graduated from Ahva Yarka high school. In childhood she faced many restrictions as a woman, yet nonetheless decided to pursue a higher education. “I paid money and enrolled in studies, but did not tell my parents. I informed them only one day before the start of my studies that I was going and that I couldn’t get my money back” (3). Ziyan enrolled in Industrial Chemical Engineering studies at Western Galilee Academic College, and in 1999 completed her studies as a chemical practical engineer. In 2003 she received a teaching certificate in administration from WIZO College in Haifa. In 2004 her father suffered a stroke, and her brother, who owned a photo development lab, had to take the father’s place at the concrete factory and asked Ziyan to help in the photography shop. Work in the shop sparked her interest and encouraged her to specialize in photography. Thus she understood that her heart was somewhere else: “I lacked awareness about who I was and had no one to guide me. But when I touched art I felt a voice in me saying that this is who I am” (4).

In 2010 Ziyan received her BA in the Fine Arts department and the French Studies department at the University of Haifa, and continued her studies towards a master’s degree. During her studies she excelled in photography and won prizes and grants, among them the Saar Efroni Artist Grant (2008), the Shpilman International Prize for Excellence in Photography awarded by the Shpilman Institute for Photography (2009), and the Outstanding Master’s Thesis award by the Friends of the University of Haifa (2010). After completing her studies she continued to be recognized for her artistic achievements. She received a grant from Mifal HaPais, the national lottery of Israel, for a solo exhibition at the Umm el-Fahem Art Gallery (2016), the Prize for the Encouragement of Creativity in the Plastic Arts from the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport (2017), an Honorable Mention Becky Dekel Prize from the Association for Women’s Art and Gender Research in Israel (2020), and the Oscar Handler Award from Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot (2022), among other awards and prizes. Her artwork is included in a variety of collections, among them the Knesset Art Collection, the Haifa Museum of Art, the Umm el-Fahem Art Gallery, the Alexander Tutsek Foundation in Munich, as well as in private collections in Israel and around the world (5).

Amira Ziyan has taught art since 2013 at the Al-Ruya middle school in Yarka, her place of residence. In 2022 she also opened her own studio and gallery in the village. Between the years 2012 to 2024 Ziyan was a member of the joint Jewish-Arab art Gallery in Kabri.    

Amira Ziyan’s artwork focuses on staged photography, aware of both narrative and symbolic dimensions: “I build my works as a composition in which the photograph, the colors and everything in the frame has a very specific purpose, while evoking the symbolic narrative I want to convey. I always say that I want to create a photograph that the viewers can ‘read’. As a woman from Yarka village and the Druze community, my works are a response to the two worlds which I am torn between: the modern and the traditional. At the center of my artistic process is a ‘stage’ of sorts which I create for the photographed scenes” (6).

Amira Ziyan’s photographs focus on present-absent female figures. She extensively documents women in contemporary Druze society, but blurs their image and conceals parts of their body. The portraits she creates are composed of objects, which cover but also complement the figures. In this manner she deals with topics relating to social-cultural  identity in Druze society and to the gender-female issue in her surrounding reality.   

In her photographs Ziyan emphasizes the mystery and contrasts she finds in women’s body: what is and is not, what is permitted and prohibited, gained and lost, black and white. These are the ideas that drive her choices in the photographs she stages (7). In the series “Trespassing” (2020), for example, a woman is shown covered in red velvet fabric, which both conceals and exposes at the same time. For the artist, the color red combines contrasts between beauty and fear. On the one hand symbolizing blood, violence and punishment, and on the other love, passion and romance.     

In the exhibition “On Bare Concrete”, displayed at the Kabri Gallery in 2016, Ziyan presented 12 photographs in different formats. In a series of meticulous and staged photographs, in which she is present, disappears and deceptive, Amira Ziyan takes us into her conflicted – yet complete, inner world. Air, wind and concrete combine and compete between them in an encounter that only seems possible in her world. The figure of the father, who was the most influential and significant figure in Amira’s life, is present and a common thread through all her works, even if he is not visible, as in the work showing a portrait of a young girl against a concrete background. The concrete, in its various shades, appears as a recurring motif in her photographs, and raises questions about the permanent and the temporary, about remembering and forgetting. These works raise the question of whether the concrete is just a thin and unstable layer only several centimeters thick, or reinforced concrete built as a stable foundation (8). 

Ziyan presented her first solo-exhibition, “Crystal Palace”, at the Umm el-Fahem Art Gallery  in 2018. In this exhibition she listened to the experiences of Druze women, in childhood and in adulthood, as single and as married women, as daughters, mothers and spouses. In her exhibition “Beyond the Body” at the Wilfrid Israel Museum (2021) Ziyan collected stories of remembrance from members of the Druze community. In keeping with the subject of the exhibition, reincarnation, here as well she delves into and examines questions about presence and absence, materiality and dissipation, in her society.     

In her artwork Ziyan prioritizes questions that center on the concept of “culture’ as an aesthetic category for examining and understanding the society and social habitus in which she works. The aesthetic and artistic space offers the possibility to reconcile nature and humankind, and makes room for voices not heard or expressed in other spaces of discourse (9).