Jana Abu Hamda
Palestinian Artist
📍 Lives in Gaza
🏛 Born in Gaza, Palestine

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Browse original paintings, prints, and available artwork by Jana Abu Hamda.

Jana is a 16-year-old Palestinian artist from Gaza currently completing her 11th grade. Living with her family in a war-damaged home with a destroyed roof, she channels her lived experience and resilience into expressive works of art across acrylic painting, embroidery, and sculpting. Her creative work weaves together raw emotional narratives of survival and displacement with a vibrant celebration of Palestinian identity, heritage, and hope.

Artist Biography

Jana is a 16-year-old emerging visual artist from Gaza, Palestine, currently in her 11th-grade school year. Working across acrylic on canvas, traditional embroidery (tatreez), and sculpture, she uses her art as a primary voice for personal reflection and cultural preservation.

Despite facing severe hardship and continuing to live with her family in their home following heavy structural damage and the destruction of its roof, Jana maintains a dedicated artistic practice. Her portfolio features vivid compositions incorporating foundational Palestinian symbols—including olive branches, roots, lemon trees, traditional thobes, the keffiyeh, the Dome of the Rock, and watermelons. Through her multidisciplinary work, Jana documents the realities of conflict while asserting the enduring richness of her homeland's cultural narrative.

Artist Story

For 16-year-old Jana, making art inside Gaza is both a personal sanctuary and a form of testimony. Everyday life takes place under challenging circumstances, inside a family home left with a destroyed roof following the war. Rather than allowing these conditions to silence her creative drive, Jana transforms her surroundings into the emotional core of her artistic process.

Jana’s works bridge the gap between shared historical memory and immediate personal experience. In her paintings, scenes of displacement and fire stand alongside vibrant depictions of women wrapped in keffiyehs and detailed tatreez embroidery, holding up rooted olive trees and flourishing lemon branches. Each piece reflects her journey as a young student navigating war, channeling raw emotion directly onto the canvas to ensure that the stories, beauty, and resilience of her people are preserved and shared with the world.

Artist Statement

"I believe that art comes directly from the heart. It doesn't need to be strictly realistic or technically perfect to be powerful; as long as it truly conveys the emotion and the story behind it, it succeeds.

My artwork is deeply rooted in my lived experience and the suffering endured through war, existing in harmony with the timeless beauty and heritage of Palestine. Through acrylics, embroidery, and sculpting, I bring together symbols of our land—our olive trees, lemons, and traditional patterns—with the honest emotions of our daily lives. I create not just to record history, but to express an unfiltered truth that speaks directly from one heart to another."

Artist at a Glance

🎨 Category

Palestinian Artist

📍 Current Residence

Gaza

🏛 Born

Gaza, Palestine

🖌 Medium

Acrylic on Canvas, and Oil on Canvas.

🎭 Style

Blends realism with surreal, textured symbolism and distorted forms.

🌿 Inspiration

Lived experience of war in Gaza, Palestinian identity, and everyday survival objects.

🖼 Subjects

Displaced figures, barefoot children, resilient women, water jerrycans, and hourglasses.

💙 Themes

Survival, lost childhood, displacement, memory, and defiant hope.

🛍 Available Works

Original Paintings • Fine Art Prints

Roots of Steadfastness

"War may restrict the movement of physical canvases out of Gaza, but it cannot silence the voices of its creators. Right now, we are offering exclusive canvas and framed prints to bridge the divide and support these resilient artists directly. Every print purchased keeps their art alive until the day we can safely deliver their original works to you."

Created by 16-year-old Gaza artist Jana, Roots of Steadfastness is a poignant acrylic painting that captures the profound bond between Palestinian identity, heritage, and the land.

The painting portrays a profile of a young Palestinian woman wearing a traditional embroidered thobe accented in vibrant red, green, and yellow patterns, draped with a classic black-and-white keffiyeh. In one hand, she cradles a vibrant, fully rooted olive tree—the ultimate symbol of endurance and connection to the soil—while her other hand reaches upward toward a stone fragment intertwined with leaves. Set against a deep, textured green background, the artwork visually articulates sumud (steadfastness), weaving personal resilience and cultural pride into a moving statement of hope and belonging.