Lamia Awad Paints What the Lab Could Not Explain

Lamia Awad was drawing before she could write. Long before letters, painting was how she spoke to the world, and that instinct never left. What changed is everything she brought back to it.

The Syrian-Canadian artist, now based in the UAE, trained as a pharmacist and holds a Master’s degree in Cell and Molecular Biology. She has spent years studying the mechanisms of life at their smallest scale: how cells signal, adapt, evolve. And somewhere in that study, a question formed that no lab could fully answer. If this is how life works, how does a person become who they are?

Her painting is where that question lives.

The science of becoming

Awad’s work is rooted in what she calls the human journey: the continuous process of becoming, shaped by experiences, challenges, transformations and the environments we live in. Her canvases explore how those experiences mark us, tilt our perceptions, and build the individuality that makes every human story unlike any other. Art, for her, is not just a visual language. It is a way of exploring the unseen dimensions of human existence, giving form to what words struggle to express.

She works primarily in acrylic, in vibrant colour and expressive composition, letting emotion and spontaneity coexist with the curiosity and rigour of her scientific mind. Intuitive, yet reflective. Occasionally she folds collage and found materials into the work, a quiet argument for sustainable practice and a reminder of our relationship with the environment.

Doha to the Emirates

Her exhibition history runs through some of the Gulf’s liveliest art platforms: Katara, Workinton M7, Qatar Art Spots, and the Qatar International Art Festival in 2022 and 2023. She served on the board of the International Artists of Doha from 2019 to 2025 and is a member of the Qatar Plastic Art Group. Now in the UAE, she continues building a visual language that evolves the way her subject does: continuously.

Ask her why she paints and the answer is a scientist’s answer delivered with an artist’s heart: to understand, to question, to feel, to communicate. Her paintings do not hand you conclusions. They open a space for reflection and invite you to bring your own memories into the encounter, where colour becomes a language, art becomes a dialogue, and being human stays what it has always been for her: an endless source of inspiration.

Lamia Awad’s work is available now on Ateliera.