"Revolution Is Female"
OPENING RECEPTION | 10th June 2026 18:00 - 20:00 | BOOK NOW
Admission to the exhibition is free during regular gallery opening hours. The opening reception and programmed events require tickets booked through P21 Gallery.
Co-curated by Rasha Eleyan and Zayna Al-Saleh
A Defiant Zaghrouta Comes to London in Rasha Eleyan’s Revolution Is Female
The Palestinian artist’s solo exhibition brings together beauty, symbolism, and resistance through pop-inflected, photorealist paintings that explore domesticity and female defiance.
Palestinian artist Rasha Eleyan will present Revolution Is Female at P21 Gallery in London on June 10, 2026. The solo exhibition centers the vital role of the revolutionary Palestinian woman, bringing together works that balance beauty and discomfort, stillness and uprising.
Rooted in symbolism, Eleyan’s work explores power, visibility, and agency, particularly through women’s roles in both domestic and political spaces. Though visually composed and at times decorative, the imagery resists passivity, asking the viewer to look, then look again.
At the heart of her practice is Zaghrouta, a celebratory ululation which Eleyan describes as “a scream delivered with composure and defiant celebration.” A recurring motif in her work for more than a decade, it becomes both a cultural expression and a political gesture, holding together beauty and resistance, celebration and defiance.
Combining pop art and realism, Eleyan creates paintings and prints that feel both inviting and quietly unsettling. Through symbolism and storytelling, she delivers messages with subtlety rather than direct declaration, centering women not as passive figures but as active forces within resistance.
A Palestinian artist based in the UK, Eleyan draws on influences shaped by life across Dubai, Jordan, Rome, Singapore, and the wider Arab world. Across these references, one concern remains constant in her work: the strength, rights, and vital role of women.
Revolution Is Female opens at P21 Gallery, 21–27 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD, on June 10, 2026, with a ticketed opening reception at 6pm. General admission to the exhibition is free during regular gallery opening hours.
Co-curator Bio:
Zayna Al-Saleh (b. 1991, London, UK) is a British-Palestinian art dealer, curator and art writer who operates independently. Between 2024 and 2026 she curated five major London auctions in aid of Palestine, raising a total of approximately $4 million. Artists included Peter Doig, Grayson Perry, Nan Goldin, Mona Hatoum, Antony Gormley, Katharine Hamnett, Jeremy Deller, Rana Begum, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Sophia Al-Maria, Rosalind Nashibibi, Chris Levine, Dima Srouji among many others.
Her most recent exhibitions include ‘Together For Palestine’ (Hope93, London, UK, 2026), ‘-cide series’, (The Flanders Architecture Institute (VAi), Het Bos, Antwerp, Belgium, 2026) ‘My People Will Return: In Air, In Water, In Light’ (TICK TACK, Antwerp, Belgium, 2025) ‘‘we ain’t dED yet’ (Gallery 46, London, UK, 2023)’A Child Is Born In Bethlehem’ (Palazzo Oddo, Albenga, Italy, 2022); ‘NO! 20 Years of Stop the War, A Visual Retrospective’ (Bow Arts, London, UK, 2021).
Her auctions and exhibitions have been featured in The Art Newspaper, ART News, Wallpaper*, British Vogue, Vogue Arabia, ITV news, Spear’s, The Glossary, Grazia, The Independent, The Standard among many others.
Artist / Co-curator Bio:
Rasha Eleyan, a Palestinian artist now based in the UK, is dedicated to preserving Palestinian heritage through her artwork, particularly from the perspective of revolutionary Palestinian women.
Her influences and inspiration is very pancontinental, her cartoon-like drawings came from her career at Disney television in Singapore and from her lifelong love for animation, while her realistic painting comes from her academic studies with BA in fine art from Jordan and advanced drawing painting studies in Rome. Fortunately, being born to the great Palestinian artist Nasr Abdelaziz Eleyan definitely played a huge part in her craft.
With color palette, elements and symbolisms deriving from the whole of the Arab world - as she was born and lived the first 18 years of her life in Dubai, then there’s the unmistakable influence of southeast Asia after she spent the past 20 years in Singapore and traveled the region - her Palestinian inspiration can be seen throughout her work.
Notable exhibitions include Arab Pop Art: Between East and West at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, Arab Spring and the Cradle of Civilization at the Orfali Art Gallery in Amman, and Heritage Wall at the Affordable Art Fair Singapore. Highlighting significant collaborations, she participated in the landmark exhibition Art of Palestine: From the River to the Sea at P21 Gallery in London, as well as Ganesha in the Arts at ION Art in Singapore. Additionally, her paintings were featured and sold in two separate editions of the Voices of Palestine auction held at The Dorchester, London.
Rasha, primarily known as a painter, boasts a diverse portfolio that extends beyond the canvas. With a successful career as a motion graphics designer, she has left her mark as the creator and animator of the “Letter Time” program on Walt Disney Television and participated with her animation at GIFFEST in Singapore.
For further exhibition information, press images and interview opportunities, please contact: P21 Gallery, email: info@p21.org.uk, Tel. 020 7121 6190