Sana Farah Bishara

 Sana Farah Bishara, one of the leading Arab women sculpting in bronze today was born in Nazareth in 1964. She attended the Academy of Design and Education in Haifa, earning a BA in Fine Arts and Sociology at the University of Haifa. A degree in Museology and M.A. in Humanities and the Arts with an art-based research specialization at Oranim College followed. “For me, sculpture is a challenge, a means of expression. As I wrestle with my identity as person, woman, mother, Arab, and Palestinian living in the State of Israel, resulting in a multifaceted, divided, and conflicted reality, my sculptures reflect my struggle.”

Beginning her practice in realistic bronze sculpture, influenced by August Rodin, Sana later incised narrow, gradually expanding cuts to form modularly divided bronze sculptures. The woman’s body in Sana’s works expresses the complexity of a woman’s life, split between work, aspirations, family, and soul, struggling for individual identity, reconciliation and acceptance. As the sculptural disassembly and separation serve as metaphorical descriptions of the person separated from family, native landscape and traditional patterns of consciousness passed down from one generation to the next, the sculpture describes the soul fractured between social, national, and gender identities. Following the 2018 Silent Outcry installation exhibited in the Umm El-Fahem Gallery, her recent work relates to the Nakba that women in general and those in her family have undergone, signifying a personal perspective that connects the personal to the collective story through art.

Her sculptures are included in Museums collections: Haifa Museum, Palestine Museum US, and are installed in public places on permanent display including a life-size statue of Saint Charbel at Saint Louis Maronite Church in Haifa. Sana’s work has been exhibited locally and internationally, receiving an honorary prize for Haifa artists (2000), and the Herman Struck Prize, City of Haifa (2007).