Nationality American Role Visual Artist Name Bissan Rafe | Website www.nohra-studio.com Spouse(s) Bulent Duz (m. 2014) | |
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Known for Surrealism, Illustration, Fairy tale | ||
Bissan Rafe (Arabic: بيسان رافع) is an Palestinian American visual artist, animator and writer from Houston, Texas, living and working in the Netherlands. She established Nohra-Studio in Houston in 2007. Her work has been exhibited in various galleries and biennials throughout the world including: USA, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Japan, UK and Palestine.
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Artwork
Bissan's artwork ranges from political cartoons, oil paintings, illustrations to literature. Her art connects the concept of world culture and folklore with a Palestinian theme. An underlying theme of her work usually revolves around multiple phases dealing with cycles of production, destruction, and reestablishment homage to the Palestinian diaspora via the continuation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
She is also noted for her unique fiction writings and illustrated novelettes in the literary fiction anthology Μυρτισα II: The Perfect Work, a 4 volume series that includes four semi-illustrated stories in chronological order: Grandlazar, Veilchen, Verlassen and Repressalie).
Fairytales
Shamms Islet: a dual publication, the first a folkloric novelette and the second an illustrated fairytale, which links Eastern to Western Asian cultures as seen through the eyes of a westerner. The story focuses mainly on the folklore of each country: Palestine, Japan and Texas (USA). The story work was done in a series of Artist in Residence research the artist undertook from 2011-2014 in the previous fore-mentioned countries.
The Child Far Away (2012), the result of a creative collaboration between the artist and Italian-American writer Jason R. Forbus, is a story that focuses on child refugees and their dreams.
De Clérambault, based on Bissan's short story with the same title, combines arts and psychology.
Animations
A short animated film for Shamms Islet is in production as of 2015. A trailer was released to YouTube on March 6, 2015, which states that the film will be released in Summer 2016.