Shaza Midani

Shaza Midani is a Syrian visual artist working across painting and photography. A graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts with a BFA in Drawing and Painting (2014), her expressionist practice is driven by emotional honesty and conceptual exploration, translating the character of contemporary life into a distinctive visual language. She won first place in the Abdullatif Al-Samoudi Prize for Young Artists in Syria, and has exhibited in Damascus, Beirut and Dubai, including The Last Supper and Contemporary Beirut in 2014, Lights Through the Wounds in Dubai in 2023, and The Khan in 2026. She also runs workshops and artistic activities for children.

Working within an Expressionist approach, her practice centers on portraiture as a means of exploring the inner emotional and psychological states of the human being. For Shaza, the portrait is not merely a depiction of a face or physical presence; it is a reflection of what lies beneath — the emotions, memories, and experiences that shape individual identity.

Her experience of living in Syria has profoundly influenced her artistic language. Growing up and working through years of instability and conflict, human suffering became an inevitable and central part of her visual vocabulary. The realities she witnessed and lived through continue to surface in her work, often through distorted forms, expressive faces, and emotionally charged imagery.

Documenting the years of war has been a defining aspect of Shaza Midani’s artistic journey. Rather than recording historical events, she focuses on the emotional traces they leave behind: fear, loss, displacement, resilience, memory, and the uncertainty of everyday life.

Through portraiture, Shaza seeks to move beyond the visible face and reach the emotional landscape of the individual. Her work becomes a space where personal memory intersects with collective experience, transforming lived realities into visual expressions of human vulnerability, resilience, and remembrance.