Juliana SERAPHIM (1934, Palestine–2005, Lebanon) was a pioneer of the Middle Eastern art scene from the 1960s to the 1990s, known for her unique Surrealist style and dreamlike iconography, which engaged deeply with gender struggle, the liberation of female sexuality and agency, nature, and spirituality.

Having been displaced in 1948 during the mass exodus of the Nakba, she moved to Beirut, Lebanon, with her family at the age of 14. At 18, she began working as a secretary for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, while attending evening art classes with Lebanese painter Jean Khalifé, who organised Seraphim’s first exhibition in his studio. She then enrolled at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts. In 1959, she spent a year in Florence before moving to Madrid in 1960 to study for a year at the Royal Academy of San Fernando on a scholarship.

Seraphim produced some of her most notable works between the 1960s and 1990s. Considered an outsider by more politically active artists, her artworks did not explicitly engage with the Palestinian national cause. Instead, she developed a unique, sensually visual vocabulary rooted in the perception of a “woman’s world”, characterised by layers of erotic, dreamlike imagery and figures that morph into plants and flowers. She also drew inspiration from the faded frescoes of angelic beings on the ceiling of her grandfather’s monastery, a former convent in Jerusalem. Her work was deeply influenced by her spirituality, sexuality, childhood memories, and upbringing.

During the Lebanese Civil War, she shuttled between Paris and Beirut and represented Lebanon at three international biennials: Alexandria (1962), Paris (1963 and 1969), and São Paulo (1965). More recently, her work was included in Beirut and The Golden Sixties at the Biennale de Lyon in 2022, alongside those of her contemporaries Etel Adnan and Huguette Caland.

Her work features in private and public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Museum of the City of Viareggio; the Musée du Surréalisme, Paris; the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman; the Sursock Museum, Beirut; the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut; and the Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah.