Three Palestinian women occupy a flattened, glowing interior of rose pink, brown, red, green, black, and white. Two sit behind a dark wooden table, while a third (in a red chair in the foreground with her back toward us) looks over one shoulder at us. Each has dark hair parted near the center, large almond eyes, and calm expressions. The woman at left folds her arms across her chest. She wears a black dress with rose and coral sleeves patterned with triangles, a broad white collar, and round pale earrings. The woman at right wears a vivid green dress whose sleeves and shoulders are filled with small symbols like an eye, birds, crescent shapes, a hand, a ladder, and a tiny house. On the table sit two tulip-shaped glasses of red tea and a shallow silver bowl with a white dove. The woman closest to us wears a black garment covered in fine white ornamental lines. Her turned pose makes her seem alert and watchful. Palestinian artist Malak Mattar centers women as carriers of memory, resilience, and cultural continuity, and this painting turns an ordinary gathering into a symbolic field of Palestinian life. The tea glasses suggest hospitality and conversation while the dove invokes peace, longing, and fragile safety. The tiny motifs on the green dress seem like a stitched archive of home, land, protection, and survival. The triangular sleeve pattern also recalls the geometry of Tatreez and other regional textiles without becoming literal illustration. Born in Gaza in 1999, Mattar began painting in 2014, when art became a way to process fear and insist on life. By the time this work was shown in the 2020 exhibition “Art of Palestinian Women in Washington,” she was a young artist already known for bold color, simplified forms, and portraits that hold grief and dignity together. Here, the three women feel like a collective presence presenting women as witnesses, companions, and bearers of a future still imagined through beauty, ritual, and steadfastness.
“Three Women” by ملك مطر Malak Mattar (Palestinian) - Acrylic on canvas / c. 2020 - Museum of the Palestinian People (Washington DC) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #MalakMattar #Mattar #PalestinianArt #PalestinianWomen #art #artText #PalestinianArtist #2020sArt #WomenPaintingWomen
