Shatha Altowai

Shatha Altowai is a Yemeni visual artist known for her figurative, cubist, and abstract oil paintings. She lives in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her work explores issues such as identity, displacement, women, children, and the impact of the civil war in Yemen. She is also known for her artistic collaboration and activism with her husband, the Yemeni pianist and composer Saber Bamatraf.

Altowai has received multiple awards, this includes the IIE-Artist Protection Fund award that was hosted at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) within the University of Edinburgh from 2020 to 2021,The John Byrne Award in 2021, and The Scottish Women's Award 2022.

She has been based in Edinburgh since November 2020.

Early life and education Shatha Altowai was born in 1989 in Aden, Democratic Yemen (now Yemen), to a Hadhrami family descending from Shibam. She spent most of her life in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, where she completed her schooling. In 2014, she graduated with a Bachelor of Information Technology with honours from Universiti Utara Malaysia, studying at its Sana'a branch. just a month before the fall of Sana'a to the Houthi rebels.

Early career in Yemen After her graduation in 2014, Altowai worked in various administrative and IT roles. By 2017, she decided to leave her professional career entirely and focus fully on her artistic pursuits.

The couple began their artistic journey together by hosting small-scale events, gradually moving to public venues like the Basement Cultural Foundation and TEDx events. Their collaborative performances, which combined Altowai's paintings with Bamatraf's piano compositions, quickly gained popularity and marked the beginning of their shared artistic journey.

Struggle during wartime In July 2015, Altowai’s house was damaged in a Saudi-led Coalition airstrike that hit a neighbouring building,

The poster for the film, depicting Altowai and her husband surrounded by art and music materials, led to a backlash from Houthi rebel group,

For more detailed information, see The controversy around the film.

I Have Met the Enemy (2019) Altowai participated in theatre in October 2019, taking part in the Commonwealth Theatres production of I Have Met the Enemy (and the Enemy is Us) as one of the three main actors. The play explored the UK arms trade and its global impact through a collaborative and personal narrative.

including the Family Series,

Altowai’s work was showcased in several exhibitions, including The White Canvas exhibition in July 2021 at (IASH), where she presented the entire set of the Family Series. Additionally, she exhibited Scratched Identities in collaboration with Art27Scotland.

Shatha’s work captures the complex interplay of strength and fear experienced by those living under constant threat. After relocating to Edinburgh, she observed a stark contrast between the ease of accessing basic needs in her new environment and the hardships endured by families back home. This led her to explore the theme of family more deeply in her art. In this series, she numbers the families rather than naming them, a choice that mirrors the reduction of individuals to mere statistics in both Yemeni and international media narratives.

Other endeavours In 2022, Altowai's artistic contributions were recognised with The Scottish Women’s Award for Art and Culture Moreover, a segment of her story with her husband, featured in BBC Scotland’s Loop (Series 4, Episode 3), was named a finalist in the Refugee Festival Scotland Media Awards 2022.

In 2023, Altowai began a residency at Edinburgh Printmakers, where she explored printmaking for the first time. During this residency, she created an artwork entitled Monument of Loss, which was exhibited at the Uprooted Visions exhibition at Edinburgh Printmakers in May 2023.

Shatha Altowai's artwork Monument of Loss has been described as "stunningly intricate," conveying a profound sense of weight and burden. Rendered in a striking blood-red colour, the abstract figures are composed of numerical tallies resembling surgical stitches. A reviewer noted that one of the pieces features six contorted figures supporting oval forms, evocative of infants, symbolising the heavy emotional toll carried by parents amid the ongoing civil war in Yemen. The artwork consists of 3 prints aims to reflect on the devastating impact of the Yemeni conflict, which has resulted in the deaths and severe injuries of over 11,000 children since 2015.

Altowai participated in an event titled Reflections on Exile and Displacement from Institute of Middle Eastern, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies (MECACS) at the University of St Andrews. She also led a community art project with women from diverse backgrounds in Edinburgh, culminating in an art installation titled Inherited Incantations, which was showcased at the Festival of Migration in June 2023.

In November 2024, Shatha Altowai was selected as a member of the inaugural Global Community for Women’s Leadership (GCWL) cohort by the IIE.

Selected exhibitions

2021 – Solo Exhibition, The White Canvas, IASH (University of Edinburgh), Edinburgh, UK.

2022 – Solo exhibition, The Displaced Paintings at Youth peacebuilding, Scotland and the World event, Bute Room, National Museum of Scotland.

2023 – Group exhibition, Uprooted Vision, Edinburgh Printmakers.

2023 – Group exhibition, Manchester Yemeni Community, Manchester, UK.

2023 – Group exhibition, Themes of displacement, statelessness, and exile across MECACS, University of St Andrews.