Artist-in-Residence
Malak Manzour
January-February 2026
“At Blue Roof, I’m seeking more than just a residency — I’m seeking a dialogue with other women artists, where shared memory, myth, and matter can converge. I’m drawn to the layered history of the space itself, and how it has held, supported, and shaped female voices over time. My hope is to explore new materials and forms, but also to practice a new rhythm — one that listens more closely to the land, the walls, and the quiet stories carried by other women. I want to trace how the personal becomes collective, how solitude opens into kinship, and how the studio can become a site for remembering what has been suppressed, silenced, or forgotten”
-Malak Manzour, Chapter 2 2025 AiR
Artist Statement:
Malak Manzour, born in 1996, from the village of Isafiya. Member of the Druze religion. painter, sculptor and installation artist. Today she lives and creates in Isafiya, her childhood home. Graduated from the Mishkan of Arts at the Haifa University (2022) I was raised in a society where belief in ancestral traditions and the continuity of the soul is deeply ingrained. As a Druze, it is impossible not to acknowledge the idea of multiple lives and the soul's past experiences. My soul carries memories that I cannot ignore, with the most vivid being a recollection of war in Lebanon: as a mother, I tried to protect my five children in the ruins of our former home, and that is how I met my end. In an instant, I found myself reborn, drawing breath and beholding the world through an unfamiliar body, a face foreign to me. It was as though my soul had seamlessly transmigrated into a fresh existence. Despite my resistance to this new reality, and feeling like an outsider amidst the familiar contours of my surroundings, I allowed my artistic journey to commence with wandering in my home area in the Carmel and in the family environment of community, nature and the animal world. a familiarity pervades with the animals that I encounter, As if intimately acquainted with a place solely in the essence of my being. and they invite the archetypes with which I work. The turn to animals is owed to my dreams. As the animal figures get transmitted and show up repetitively in dreams accompanied with the wilderness atmosphere of nature. Many times I find myself inhabiting dual realms simultaneously. While my physical form remains rooted in a specific place, my soul ardently longs for the profound depths of an intrinsic yet unstable realm. Where Nature or the Animal can bleed and the dream can turn into a nightmare. The same dream produces another meaning that takes place in reality.
My primary endeavor in my work is to illuminate the dual facets inherent in objects and subjects, encapsulating the expansive void that lies between these polarities. With the attempt of assembling the bruised, blooded, and fragmented chunks into a crystalized unity, probing the elusive nexus between the point of departure and the pivotal juncture amid dualities.
My exploration extends to the examination of their coexistence. Navigating the intricate terrain where harmony intertwines with discord, unraveling the profound interplay within these realms. Akin to the dance between grace and monstrosity.
For example: I take my own or a relative's hair and attach it to a foreign material that I paint with oil paints (red or brown) in an attempt to merge the different worlds into one organism. The Teeth are another figure that comes back a lot in my works. I connect them to Womanhood. Considering the perplexing nature of a woman\mother; a collective symbol of tenderness and nurturing source that can switch in a second to be protective beast against anything that threatens to hurt her offspring. But The beast is unpredictable with a great capability to destroy, whether it is towards others if she blindly turns against them, or towards herself by being her own victim, the one she keeps sacrificing.
My works are characterized by layers of material. Whether it is in painting, drawing, sculpture or installation, I like to use many layers to give the work a sense of duration and physical depth. The layers added give an impression of concealment and coverage. In my works I often use materials such as: wood, plaster, polyester, metal, human\synthetic hair , synthetic fur etc. I build and dismantle the work as it slowly develops into a final product. Every work includes symbolic elements, each one appears repeatedly, granting existence to what does not exist, forging a coherent reflection and a cry of justification of my own being.
