Maria Saleh Mahameed (b. 1990, Umm el-Fahem) lives and works in Ein Mahel. She holds an M.Ed and B.Ed in Art, both from Oranim College. She was born to a Ukrainian mother and a Palestinian father, who met when her father studied law in Kiev, Ukraine. Raised in Umm el Fahem, a Palestinian city occupied by Israel since 1948, Saleh Mahameed embodies this complex identity in terms of nationality and religion. Saleh Mahameed succeeds in creating intimate narratives while dealing with personal, social and political issues concerning the Palestinian society. Black charcoal is dominant in her large-scale works, lending itself to everything from architectural drawings, to sketching and scribbling, and provides for an intimate, sensitive, and tender mode of expression, thanks largely to the direct contact of the fingers with the drawing surface, as they smear, rub, and smooth the line. For her, the use of charcoal is a way of leaving a mark in a direct, visceral manner, using the locale’s own materials. Charcoal is directly linked to her birthplace, Umm el-Fahem (“Mother of Charcoal”), which, as its name suggests, has long been famous as a place of charcoal production and trade.