A luminous chest-up portrait centers an unidentified woman facing forward, her expression focused and unyielding. Her eyes meet ours directly beneath sharply arched brows and long lashes while warm reds and cool shadows model her light-to-medium skin. A black crow perches close on her left shoulder, looking to the side like a watchful companion. Above, her hair erupts into a dramatic crown of flame-orange and red with whorls, ribbons, and looping marks dotted with bright rings that hover like sparks. Her dress is painted as overlapping, scale-like strokes in greens, aquas, yellows, and coral, creating a shimmering surface that feels protective and celebratory at once. The background melts into soft gold, mauve, and pale green with floating shapes, giving the figure an icon-like stillness inside a dreamlike atmosphere. The title only identifies the woman as being Maslawi (Moslawi), which means “from Mosul” or a person who belongs to the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. Artist Marwan Fathi, a Mosul-born painter and professor of fine arts, made this work after years of living through the city’s occupation and the devastating campaign that drove ISIS (Daesh) out. He has spoken about lasting trauma and still jolting awake at night expecting an airstrike, but his art insists on survival in full color. The crow is a close witness to coercion and fear, perched at the body’s edge but unable to eclipse her presence. The scale-like garment evokes fish skin and the Jonah-and-the-whale story tied to Mosul’s cultural memory. This was especially resonant after the destruction of Jonah’s shrine and turns local history into a symbol of endurance and return. Presented through Al-Ghad Radio’s documentation of Mosul’s cultural revival, the portrait is both testimony and reclamation depicting a woman rendered not as erased, but as radiant, composed, and unquestionably seen.

“Portrait of a Maslawi Woman” by مروان فتحي / Marwan Fathi (Iraqi) - Oil on canvas / 2019 - Al-Ghad Radio (Mosul, Iraq) #WomenInArt #MarwanFathi #مروان_فتحي #Fathi #AlGhadRadio #PortraitofaWoman #Maslawi #BlueskyArt #IraqiArt #art #arte #artText #artwork #IraqiArtist #Symbolism #ContemporaryPortrait

A stylized portrait of a woman fills the canvas, rendered in bold, flat planes of color. Her face is painted in saturated reds and oranges, with large, luminous green eyes that look outward with a tired steadiness. A green headscarf wraps her hair and neck, edged with small gold dots. A decorative earring hangs from an exposed ear. In the foreground, a large open palm rises like a protective screen, painted in cool turquoise and deep green, with an almond-shaped eye set into the hand. Beside it, a second hand form appears as a geometric emblem, its shapes broken into triangles and blocks of yellow, teal, and red form a small red bird near the edge. Behind her, a half-circle fan of dark and light green segments crowns the scene, while an arched window and a balcony railing. The overall palette leans heavily into greens layered from emerald to sea-glass so the woman’s red face is both presence and alarm, as if she is lit from within. Created in Mosul in 2019, Iraqi artist Al-Tai (لبنى الطائي) links this woman’s gaze to a broader community of Maslawi women and frames the raised palm as a hamsa-like hand-shaped amulet of protection found across the Middle East and North Africa. The painting’s repeated “hand-and-eye” motif feels like a wish for safety made visible to ward off harm, refuse silence, and insist on being seen. Al-Tai notes that “Maslawi women were the biggest victims under Daesh-occupied Mosul,” and the fractured geometry throughout the composition echoes lives reshaped by occupation and aftermath including home spaces altered and bodies carrying memory. Yet the work is not only elegy as the greens mark endurance and renewal, and the small bright, alert, and perched bird introduces a note of survival. By placing an interfaith symbol of care (known variously as the Hand of Fatima, Miriam, or Mary) at the painting’s center, Al-Tai turns protection into a shared language for an image of communal guarding, and of a city’s women holding one another upright.

“The Woman” by Lubna Al-Tai (Iraqi) - Oil on canvas / 2019 - Al-Ghad Radio (Mosul, Iraq) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #LubnaAlTai #لبنى_الطائي #AlTai #AlGhadRadio #IraqiArt #Hamsa #art #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #ContemporaryArtist #Maslawi #IraqiArtist #WomenPaintingWomen