Helen Zughaib is a Washington, DC-based artist who paints primarily in gouache and ink on board and canvas. Her work is motivated by her desire, as an Arab-American, to encourage...
Helen Zughaib is a Washington, DC-based artist who paints primarily in gouache and ink on board and canvas. Her work is motivated by her desire, as an Arab-American, to encourage dialogue, create empathy and bring understanding and acceptance between “the people of the Arab world and the West.”
Circle Home was created for a solo show in Beirut in 2010--Zughaib’s first trip back thirty-five years after evacuating Lebanon in 1975 during the Lebanese Civil War. As she wrote the word “beit (home) over and over again in a circle, she summoned feelings of loss and sadness, as well as the possibility of a return, a process that allowed her to grapple with the past while looking toward the future.
Zughaib has been widely exhibited in the United States, Europe, and Lebanon. Her paintings are included in many private and public collections, including the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, the Arab American National Museum in Detroit, Michigan, and the
Minneapolis Institute of Art. Her paintings are included in the DC Art Bank Collection and she has received the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship award in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.