Juliana Seraphim Palestine, b. 1934

Born in Palestine in 1934, Juliana Seraphim had to move out of her country at young age in 1948, and she went with her family to Lebanon. Being the oldest child, she started working at young age to support her family. A family friend encouraged her to try drawing and painting. Despite her full time job and her parents’ opposition, she received a scholarship to study in Europe, Florence and Madrid. When she came back from her experience, she was convinced to become an artist. At first it was difficult, earning very little income, until she obtained a new scholarship to study in Paris where she gained further recognition and received her first commissions.

Seraphim believes that femininity and sensuality are essential qualities in women. She accentuates these aspects especially in drawings, where sensuality becomes eroticism with the addition of male nudity. Generally, her scenes look like puzzling illusions, portals to another dimension. Sometimes grotesque, her hyper-feminine figures are redolent of Hieronymus Bosh, or the Surrealist Max Ernst, both a source of inspiration for her fantastical scenes.

In The Eye, Seraphim depicts women wearing insect wings and sheer dresses laced with capillaries, floating through imaginary structures like a dream. Seraphim once said “The images in my paintings come from deep within me; they are surreal and unexplainable. Consciously I want to portray a woman’s world and how important love is to a woman. Few men understand the quality of love a woman seeks. I try to show them.” Female figures in the painting are biomorphic subjects that become human-like forms. Through this visual language, Seraphim sought to unfetter women’s inner thoughts, and unravel their inner essence, embodying sensuality and irrevocable autonomy.