Galleria Fumagalli presents the first solo exhibition at the venue of artist Nidaa Badwan (Abu Dhabi, 1987), a Palestinian artist with Italian citizenship, currently based in the Marche region, Italy. Since 2024 she has been exclusively represented by Galleria Fumagalli.
The exhibition takes its title from the unpublished body of photographic work Rinascita [Rebirth], a project that emerged to try to cross a series of thresholds in the artist’s personal and artistic journey – represented by the earlier series on view: Cento giorni di solitudine (2016), and Le Oscure Notti dell’Anima (2020) – in order to reach a condition of awakening and rebirth.
Featured in the show is also the documentary film Rinascita. Nella stanza di Nidaa Badwan directed by Andrea Laquidara, in which the artist tells her story, from her Arab origins to her move to Italy and the genesis of her new artistic project.
Nidaa Badwan embraces the Hindu philosophical thought – followed by Schopenhauer – for which the true essence of things, the immortal essence of the world, is concealed from the perception of the human being who, therefore, lives in a condition of ignorance and suffering. This thought is borrowed by Nidaa Badwan in light of a traditional Arab belief according to which every child carries a heavy inheritance resulting from the emotional experience of seven matrilineal past generations. This heredity is also mixed with the emotions and feelings transmitted directly from the mother to the child during the gestation period. As a rebel against these conditions, an emancipation from the darkness of suffering and a break from the chain of heredity, the artist aspires to her own rebirth.
The unpublished photographic series traces the artist’s intimate experience from her conception in 1986 to her birth in 1987, as a metaphor for a universal rebirth.

«My intent is to heal myself and people through images. Art, being an expression of thought, is a refuge and catharsis at the same time. It is therapy that allows us to disavow the atrocities of a life mainly dedicated to individualism» states Nidaa Badwan.
Nidaa Badwan’s artistic research is profoundly influenced by the experience of growing up in the Palestinian territory (in Deir Al-Balah, in the south of the Gaza Strip) in the climate of discrimination and persecution of women implemented by the Hamas regime. In 2013, following the attack by some militiamen who accused her of not wearing a veil on the street, she chose to isolate herself for several months in her 3×3-meter room in Gaza, to pursue an experience of artistic freedom, resistance and peaceful rebellion against the constant and violent repression. Her self-imposed confinement allows her to focus on her own self, dedicate to deep meditation, and freely express her femininity. Hence, she realized the series of shots Cento giorni di solitudine in 2016, published, among the others, on the front page of the New York Times.
This is followed in 2020 by the series Le Oscure Notti dell’Anima, which documents the artist’s experience of meditated introspection to confront her own demons and condition of solitude, and in 2021 by the series The Game which pays homage to the great poet Dante Alighieri in the 700th anniversary of his death. In 2023 the Museum for Art in Wood in Philadelphia commissioned a project dedicated to the Mashrabiya (in Islamic architecture a wooden grid that safeguards the environments inhabited by women from prying eyes): Nidaa Badwan subverts the rule by presenting Love behind the Mashrabiya in which the wooden grid, becoming sparser, hides nothing, rather it becomes the backdrop to the industrious life of the subjects portrayed.

In 2016 she was awarded “The 2016 Sovereign Middle East & North Africa Art Prize” dedicated to the 30 best artists from the Arab world, with prizes and exhibitions in Dubai. In March 2017 she was speaker at the UNESCO conference “Cultural heritage and identity: an Arab youth perspective”, held in Carthage (Tunisia). In October 2018 she participated as a speaker in the TEDx San Marino.
Nidaa Badwan exhibited her photographic works in institutions in Italy and around the world, including: Salannunziata, Imola (2023); Museum for Art in Wood, Philadelphia (2023); Museo della Città – Spazio Presente, Ancona (2022); Pinacoteca Civica Crivelli, Sant’Elpidio a Mare (2021); California Museum of Photography, Riverside (2019); Musée du quai Branly, Paris (2019); San Francesco Museum, San Marino (2018-2019); Colorno Palace, Parma (2018); Institute Contemporary Art, Richmond, Virginia (2018); Palazzo Patrizi, Siena (2018); Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin (2017); IVAM, Valencia (2017); Villa Bertelli, Forte dei Marmi (2017); Armani Hotel, Dubai (2016); SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2016); Trapholt Museum, Kolding (2016); Palazzo Graziani, San Marino (2016); Jerusalem and West Bank (2015).

Read the press release →