Palestinian artist Fatima Abu Roomi grew up in a small village in Western Galilee. She studied at Mar-Elias College and Oranim Academic College before working as a sculpture studio assistant. Abu Roomi participated in many group exhibitions and in 2011 she presented Personal Story, her first solo exhibition at the Umm al-Fahm Art Gallery.

Her paintings possess haunting beauty, rich colouring and ornate textures, and represent both resistance and revelation. Although she often depicts faces, these faces never reveal a smile. It is her pressing concern for the condition of Arab women that marks out Roomi’s work and expresses her resistance to the oppression of Arab women. With her exacting aesthetics, sensitive palette, rich textures and an expert hand, Roomi forces us to witness sorrow and joy, bitterness and sweetness, fiction and reality.