Juliana Seraphim (Arabic: جوليانا سيرافيم; born 1934 in Jaffa, Palestine; died 2005 Beirut, Lebanon) is a Palestinian-born painter.
[2] In 1971 Seraphim completed Shorewood publishers commission for 27 engravings to illustrate a special de luxe portfolio anthology of the works of nine Nobel Prize writers.
[1] Whereas her Lebanese contemporaries often adopted a figurative style to address the central issues of the Palestinian struggle, Seraphim’s visual language is characterized by complex, undulating layers and improvisational, dream-like imagery.
[4] Through this unique style, she created an imaginative realm that allowed her to reimagine her loneliness and social isolation as an unmarried woman artist in a patriarchal society.
On the other hand, when you are with your easel, you have peace, silence, and an unfolding, exploding vision before you.”[5] Early in life, Juliana Seraphim felt a need to create art.
With her family’s financial support, she trained in both European Old Master and Eastern artistic traditions, embarking on a journey through abstract, surrealist, materialist, and realist expressions.
Her fierce fantasy style drew from early memories of winged angels depicted on ceiling frescoes in her grandfather’s convent in Jerusalem.
[8] Her family name, Seraphim, traces back to the Hebrew plural “seraph,” the many-winged guardian angels of God’s throne, often represented in Byzantine and Islamic art.
By avidly incorporating winged motifs in her bold oil portraits of women, Seraphim captured an intricate connection between her art and self-identity.
[6] Her pieces defy the burden of gravity, elevating her ethereal understanding of the feminine — at times fully visible, at others dissipating into the radiant background.
[6] Through this visual language, Seraphim sought to liberate the woman’s subconscious and discover her inner being — in essence, embodying sensuality and irrevocable autonomy.
[5] In both Lebanon and France, Seraphim’s women subjects asserted their identities in societies that often judged a woman’s value based on her relationships with men.
She championed this vision of empowerment within the international art market, where collectors and audiences at times devalued her work simply due to its inherent femininity.
They portrayed a mysterious world — birds, animals, trees, moons, faces…all exotic and foreign, fascinating, and a bit frightening to a child’s imagination.