
Amira Ziyan
Photographer, Artist, Teacher
Ameera Zyian, Born 1977 Lives and works in Yarka, Israel
Graduated from the Haifa University's Arts program and earned master's degree from there. Ziyan's Artwork focuses on staged photography which emphasizes the act of the physical character's absence by evinced it with the high presence of the scene's objects. Women from her Israeli Druze society are mainly the object of Zian's Art beside other other social aspects such as Identity and gender in the contemporary Druze culture.
As an artist, my main medium is staged photography. I build my works as a planed composition where the image, the colors and everything in the frame has an extremely specific intension applying the symbolic narrative that I want to tell. I often say that I want to create a kind of photography that people will be able to "read".
As a woman coming from Kfar Yarka and the Druze community, my work is reacting to both environments I am torn between: the modern and the traditional. At the center of my creative process there is a kind of "stage" that I create for the photographed scenes.


Education
2012 MFA, University of Haifa, Israel
2010 BA in Fine Arts and French Studies, University of Haifa, Israel
Awards and Grants
2022 Oscar Handler Award from Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot
2020 Joshua Rabinowitz Foundation for the Tel Aviv Arts
2020 Pais Culture Council’s Grant for the solo exhibition “at Wilfrid Israel Museum, Kibbutz Hazora
2020 Special Commendation of "Beki Prize" of the year from the Association for Women's Art and Gender
Research in Israel
2017 The Israel Ministry of Culture Creativity Encouragement Award
2016 Pais Cultural Fund’s Grant for a solo exhibition at the Umm El Fahem Gallery
2010 High Achievement in Final Project Award by the Friends of the University of Haifa
2009 The Shpilman Award for Photography Students, The Shpilman Institute, Tel Aviv
2008 The Saar Efroni Artist Prize, Israel
Collections
Haifa Museum of Art
The Knesset (Israeli Parliament)
Diana Lipton
The Core Collection of Contemporary Art, NYU Tel Aviv
Umm El Fahem Art Gallery
Adv. Kofti Mazen
The law firm of Herzog Fox Ne'eman, Tel Aviv
Private collections in Israel and abroad
Published Catalogs
Beyond the Body (Heb, Arb, Eng), Amira Ziyan - Exhibition Catalog, Wilfrid Museum, 2021, Texts by: Shir Meller-Yamaguchi
Art and Research Vol 6 Druze Woman(Heb), Amira Ziyan- Exhibition Catalog, Bar- Ilan University ,2019, Texts by: Ms. Lea Fish
Crystal Palace (Heb, Arb, Eng), Amira Ziyan - Exhibition Catalog, The Um el-Fahem Gallery Feb 2018. Texts by: Gilad Ophir, Said Abo Shakra
On Bare Concrete (Eng, Heb), Amira Ziyan - Exhibition Catalog, Cabri Gallery, Kibutz Cabri, Curator Avshalom Levi