For the first time in Austria, the work of pioneering Palestinian artist Laila Shawa is presented under a title that honours her early encounter with Salzburg: School of Seeing. Between 1960 and 1963, Shawa studied at Oskar Kokoschka’s experimental summer academy, a foundational period that shaped her approach to art-making and pedagogy alike. But Salzburg, here, is not a destination, it’s the beginning of a lifelong journey that would lead Shawa across Gaza, Rome, Cairo, London, and beyond.
Curated by Jakub Gawkowski, the exhibition reflects on this formative Austrian chapter as a portal into Shawa’s broader trans-cultural practice. Rather than offering a retrospective, the presentation gathers a constellation of works that compress time and geography. Byzantine calligraphy collides with graffiti tags; Islamic motifs sit alongside echoes of Western pop art. This critically hybrid style, often described as “Islamo-pop”, uses visual pleasure as a subversive force, exposing the violence of representation, war, and empire.
Shawa’s presence in Austria now holds added resonance: her return, posthumously, to the country that shaped her early artistic sensibility. The exhibition, presented in collaboration with TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki Szczecin, Poland (where it travels next), invites a re-reading of Shawa’s career not as one of exile or departure, but of layered returns.
In revisiting Salzburg through her work, School of Seeing affirms Shawa’s place in the transnational history of contemporary art, one that moves through, rather than beyond, the complexities of geography, identity, and resistance.
Location: Salzburger Kunstverein, Austria
Date: 25 July until 14 September 2025