Helen Zughaib

Helen Zughaib ( zə-GAYB; born 1959) is a painter and multimedia performer living in functional in Washington, D.C.. She was the daughter of a State Department civil servant. Her relatives left Lebanon in 1975 due to the outbreak Lebanese Civil War, and moved to Europe as a teenager, attending tall school in Paris. She studied at Northeast London Polytechnic School of Art. She moved to the United States to assay visual and substitute at Syracuse University graduating in 1981 once her BFA. After graduating she took a job designing china which led to her developing her unique painting style. She uses gouache as her primary medium, but as a consequence creates infected media installations. Her themes are centered around hopefulness, healing, and spirituality, using visual arts to concern and foster sure ideas approximately the Middle East.

Zughaib illustrated Kaleel Sakakeeny’s book “Laila’s Wedding” published in 1994.

Zughaib’s fake has been purchased by the United States management to be total as gifts to foreign leaders. In 2009 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave Moroccan King Mohamed V Zughaib’s interpretation of the Washington Monument during Clinton’s vacation to Morocco. In 2010 President Barack Obama presented Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki gone Zughaib’s painting “Midnight Prayers” during the Prime Minister’s visit to the White House.

Zughaib’s take effect comments on cultural identity, family life, the plight of refugees and displacement in the Middle East, the Arab Spring, and the Lebanese Civil War. Her notable series of 23 paintings titled "Stories My Father Told Me," for example, is based on the folks tales and intimates history that her Lebanese daddy has told her more than the years, and includes numerous stories of migration and displacement. The total series was shown at the Arab American National Museum in 2015.

Her 2019 “Syrian Migration Series” shown at the Jerusalem Fund Gallery in Washington, DC was inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s 1940 “Migration Series.”

Zughaib's style combines a variety of art historical references and influences including post-Impressionism and pop art in the same way as Islamic art motifs of geometric patterns and floral arabesque. Her appear in can be found in many notable collections, such as The White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, and the Arab American National Museum. She has had higher than 20 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Middle East.