Taleb Dweik

Taleb Dweik is a Palestinian painter and art educator from Jerusalem, celebrated for his vibrant, expressive depictions of the city and for his lasting influence on Palestinian art and arts education.

Dweik was born in Hosh al-Shay near Bab al-Silsila in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1952.1 Growing up in the Old City, he spent his childhood around al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.2 From an early age, he was therefore exposed to Jerusalem’s unique aesthetics and its daily rhythm and pulse.

He attended al-‘Umariyya Elementary School, a madrasa in the Old City, which is also the first station on the Via Dolorosa. There, he began drawing in his workbooks. Dweik told Filastin newspaper that at school, he was always busy doodling in his notebooks, which caught his teacher’s attention. Rather than punishing him, the teacher, recognizing his evident talent, asked him to bring his drawings and posted them on the walls of the school and classroom.3

But Israeli forces expelled Dweik and his family from their home during the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967. They claimed that the house was located atop a Jewish shrine. Dweik was 11 years old when the family left Jerusalem and relocated to Hebron.4

The Dweik family was of modest means. Dweik’s father did what he could to raise his 12 children, working as a traveling salesman across the Palestinian countryside.5 As a boy, Dweik often accompanied his father on his journeys from village to village, and these trips imbued him with an appreciation for Palestine’s natural beauty.

While Dweik possessed artistic talent, even as a child, he did not intentionally decide to study art. It was a decision his father made, because he could not afford to send all his children to university. By the time Dweik was finishing school, Jordan was offering scholarships to study the arts in Egyptian universities. Dweik passed aptitude tests and moved to Egypt to study art in higher education in the 1970s.

He attended Helwan University in Cairo, where he studied fine arts and design at the Faculty of Fine Arts, focusing on painting, composition, color, and artistic techniques that blended his Jerusalem-inspired vision with broader modern approaches. He remained at Helwan University after completing his bachelor’s and went on to earn a master’s in art education in 1977.

Even while studying abroad, Dweik remained connected to his Palestinian identity and Jerusalem’s visual and cultural heritage through his work. In Cairo, his artistic subject matter focused on Jerusalem’s landscapes, architectural forms, and everyday life. He sought to capture the city’s aesthetic beauty and cultural memory in his work.

After completing his studies in Cairo, Dweik returned to Jerusalem, where he immersed himself in his artistic practice, contributing to art education in Palestine—to this day.

In the late 1990s, he began teaching art at Rawdat El-Zuhur School in Jerusalem (see Rawdat El-Zuhur). Later, he worked as an inspector of fine arts for schools in Jerusalem, overseeing curricula and ensuring quality art education. This position allowed him to influence broader educational policies and mentor other teachers. He was a member of the Palestinian Curriculum Arts and Crafts Committee and published a book on art education for secondary-level students.6

From 1990 to 1996, Dweik served as president of the League of Palestinian Artists (est. 1973), promoting local artists, organizing exhibitions, and creating platforms for Palestinian visual culture to flourish. He also contributed as a board member to important institutions such as the Palestinian National Theatre—El-Hakawati and Al-Wasiti Art Centre in Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, which was founded in 1994 to build a bridge between Palestinian artists and their compatriots in exile and other international artists, foster creative expression and professionalism in the arts, support aspiring artists in Palestine, and archive and preserve art in Palestine.7 Dweik was a founding member.

Dweik joined the Faculty of Fine Arts at Al-Quds University, where he taught courses in painting, composition, and design. His teaching integrated academic rigor and cultural awareness. Between 2001 and 2003, he served as dean of this faculty, leading it, shaping programs, and mentoring young Palestinian artists.

By extending his teaching beyond classrooms and into public spaces, particularly through murals in schools (see Back to School Not Guaranteed for Palestinian Students in Jerusalem, Hundreds Left with No Schooling) and Jerusalem neighborhoods, Dweik transformed education into a shared civic act, making art and creative expression accessible and meaningful to everyday Palestinian life in the city.

Over the course of more than four decades of creating art, Dweik’s work has consistently centered on the city of Jerusalem, both as a physical landscape and as a cultural symbol, reflecting his deep love for his city and its people. His paintings on this theme are vibrant with color, emanating life and joy, as a counterweight to the daily heaviness of realities Palestinian face in the city.

In the 1980s, he created some of his first major works depicting Jerusalem’s architecture and daily life. These pieces blend documentary observation with expressive, vibrant color and form, portraying city streets, domed mosques, stone buildings, hillsides, and people in cultural or religious contexts.

Even at this early stage of his career, his art reflected a strong attachment to place and Palestinian identity, capturing Jerusalem not just as a location but as a living, spiritual environment. When he first began his artistic journey, Dweik used to carry his paintings and walk for 12 kilometers in order to participate in art exhibitions, determined that Jerusalem be represented everywhere he went.8

Rather than focusing directly on political conflict, Dweik often represents Jerusalem as a place of beauty, heritage, and memory, using bright palettes and simplified forms to emphasize its landscapes and historical sites. Scholars note that many of his works intentionally present idealized images of the city, sometimes using a childlike style to explore themes of land, heritage, and childhood connected to Jerusalem.9 In so doing, he depicted the city filled with innocence and spontaneity—a city of bliss, beauty, and utopia.

From 2000 onwards, he explored mixed-media techniques and collage, investigating relationships between the land, heritage, and childhood.

In 2008, Dweik developed the Waiting series, a set of mixed-media paintings exploring hope, anticipation, and resilience. Works in this series feature figures under moonlit skies, with layered textures and silhouettes creating depth and movement. They appear to be crowds of obscured faces standing in fields. One painting depicts a boy and girl on a swing beneath birds and a glowing moon, symbolizing innocence and future possibility. These works combine expressive brushwork with symbolic imagery, reflecting both personal and collective experiences under occupation.

Introducing the Waiting series, Dweik says:

In 2009, Dweik painted Jerusalem at Night for its designation by UNESCO and the Arab League as the Capital of Arab Culture. This was celebrated by the planning of the program “Al-Quds Arab Capital of Culture” on March 21, 2009. This work uses impressionistic, almost abstract brushwork to depict the cityscape at night, with domes, minarets, and al-Aqsa Mosque emphasized through vibrant color contrasts. The painting communicates both the aesthetic beauty of Jerusalem and its spiritual significance, solidifying Dweik’s reputation as an artist who documents cultural memory through vivid, expressive landscapes.

While the program opened in Bethlehem and was supposed to have related events in Jerusalem, Gaza, Nazareth, and at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, the day before its planned opening, Israel banned all eight program events in Jerusalem and arrested 20 organizers.11

In 2016, Dweik held the exhibition Jerusalem Dwells within Me, featuring 19 large-scale paintings portraying everyday social and cultural life in Jerusalem—markets, weddings, prayers, harvests, and family gatherings. In this series, Dweik emphasizes community, tradition, and continuity, while maintaining his expressive, colorful style. These works illustrate how his earlier focus on cityscapes evolved into more complex social narratives, integrating human presence with architectural and environmental settings.

In February 2025, during an exhibition in Jerusalem, Dweik described the city as being “so rich with ideas that it can inspire an artist not only to create an artwork but to fill up entire art exhibitions”12—which clearly, throughout his life, he has done.

Since 2021, Dweik has worked with the Jerusalem Icon of Fine Arts group, which he played a central role in establishing. It emerged as a response to the limited institutional support available to Palestinian visual artists in Jerusalem and the increasing difficulty of sustaining artistic practice in the city. Dweik helped shape the group’s vision as a platform that brings artists together, highlighting Jerusalem as a living cultural space and creating opportunities for exhibition, dialogue, and mutual support. The initiative has held shows in Jerusalem, Haifa, Birzeit, Bethlehem, and abroad.

In addition to his role in founding the initiative, he has been deeply involved in organizing and curating its exhibitions and in mentoring its younger artists. Many of the artists involved are former students of Dweik’s or younger practitioners whom he has guided in the public art scene.

Through the Jerusalem Icon of Fine Arts group, Dweik has reinforced the continuity of Palestinian artistic presence in the city, linking generations of artists and emphasizing art as both cultural expression and quiet resistance rooted in everyday Jerusalem life.

In February 2025, Dweik co-led, co-organized, and participated in the exhibition Jerusalem through the Eyes of Its Artists, held at the Yabous Cultural Centre. The exhibition showcases paintings by 22 Jerusalem-based artists through the Jerusalem Icon of Fine Arts group. The works express varied perspectives on Jerusalem—its people, landmarks, daily life, and cultural spirit—that highlight the artists’ personal connections to the city.13

About the exhibit, Dweik explained: “Artists are a mirror to their generation as well as to their hometown. It’s their duty to express through art; to demonstrate their presence through the different passageways and seasons.”

One painting Dweik highlighted in this exhibition, titled Woman Is the Icon, depicts a rooted olive tree with bright, expressive colors and feminine features grounded in a water-like surface—a symbolic tribute to Palestinian culture and resilience. Dweik described using this imagery to bring joy and positive spirit to classic Palestinian themes while promoting young artists.

The exhibit also went on tour—most recently, to Rabat, Morocco, for the three-day program “Jerusalem Nights in Morocco,” organized by the Al-Quds Charity Fund in partnership with the Burj al-Luqluq Social Center Society in Jerusalem (see Burj al-Luqluq) and the Moroccan Association for Supporting Reconstruction in Palestine. The program, held on January 22–25, 2026, featured works from the exhibit by Dweik and Shehad al-Qawasmi, both of whom were in attendance.14

President of the State of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas awarded Dweik the Medal of Culture, Science, and Arts at the “Innovation Level.” This medal was granted “in recognition of his rich artistic career, featuring works that have reached international audiences and successfully portrayed national identity, embodied the Palestinian narrative in Jerusalem, and reflected the suffering, resilience, and steadfastness of the Palestinian people, as well as their attachment to their heritage, land, and holy sites.”15

At the ceremony, which took place on August 15, 2017, at the presidential palace in Ramallah, Dweik said:

Dweik has held several solo and group exhibitions internationally, including in Tokyo, Cairo, Madrid, Bonn, Washington, DC, Bethlehem (Arizona), Toronto, Sharjah (multiple years), Dubai, Amman, and Rabat, and locally, including Bethlehem (Palestine) and Jerusalem.

Dweik is still active as an artist and educator in Jerusalem. In late August 2025, he completed a large-scale public mural at the Dar al-Aytam Islamic Industrial and Academic School in Jerusalem’s Old City, a six-meter-high, vividly colored work designed to greet students and families at the start of the school year. The mural reflects Dweik’s long-standing commitment to using art as a source of inspiration and resilience. The project is part of a broader pattern of public art initiatives in which Dweik has been involved, with over 40 murals across East Jerusalem schools and neighborhoods, each aiming to bring visual vibrancy, cultural identity, and encouragement to local residents.

By bringing art into public spaces such as schools and neighborhoods, Dweik expands the role of the artist beyond galleries, transforming walls into sites of hope. In doing so, he embeds art into the daily experience of generations of Jerusalemites, especially children, for whom his work is often a first encounter with creative expression.

The Dar al-Aytam mural initiative, like so much of Dweik’s work, underscores his understanding of art as a responsibility to place and community. Through years of teaching, Dweik has emphasized discipline, experimentation, and emotional honesty, while encouraging students to draw directly from their lived experience in Jerusalem.

Indeed, through his own artistic practice, Dweik has treated Jerusalem not as a distant subject but as a lived, evolving reality. His visual language, marked by bold color, expressive form, and symbolic references, reflects this approach, presenting Jerusalem as a space of Palestinian memory, resilience, and continuity. His vibrant, imaginative works help us imagine another Jerusalem, one of life, joy, and hope.

Abbas, Mahmoud. “President Abbas awards Palestinian artist Taleb Duwaik with the Order of Culture, Sciences and Arts . . .” [In Arabic.] Translation by Jerusalem Story. Facebook, August 15, 2017,

“Beyond the Collection: Bringing Together Art, Tradition and Religion.” Dar Al-Kalima University, 2021.

“Closing of ‘Jerusalem Nights in Morocco’ with Participation of Palestinian Creatives from Jerusalem.” Yaffa News Network, January 25, 2026.

al-Dalu, Huda. “In Pictures, Taleb Dweik: Art Chose Him, So He Traveled Jerusalem for 50 Years with His Brush.” [In Arabic.] Felesteen, February 23, 2023.

Dweik, Taleb. “Waiting.” Orient Gallery, March 2008.

“Getting to Know the Artist.” [In Arabic.] Suad Abu Odeh, October 7, 2021.

Khassawneh, Fatema Yousef. “Chromatic Meaning in the Palestinian Plastic Art: The Artwork of the Artist Taleb Dweik as a Model.” Arts and Design Studies 61 (2018): 47–58.

Mazen, Nadeem. “‘Jerusalem in [sic] the Eyes of Its Artists’ Exhibition.” Accessed May 5, 2026.

Reuters. “Israel Bans Palestinian Cultural Events.” Ynet News, March 20, 2009.

Reuters. “Police: Palestinian Cultural Event Failed.” Ynet News, March 22, 2009.

Reuters. “Police Arrest 20 at Palestinian ‘Cultural Event.’” Ynet News, March 21, 2009. https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3689768,00.html.

“Visual Artist Taleb Dweik: Paintings That Mimic the Details of Jerusalem and Reflect Its Beauty.” [In Arabic.] al-Arabi, January 15, 2023.

“Al-Wasiti Art Centre: A Place in Arab Jerusalem for Art and Artists.” al-Hoash Gallery. Accessed May 5, 2026.

[Profile photo: Digital Hafiza]