This study focuses on several art projects produced by female Palestinian-Arab students attending a peripheral college in Israel. Examining these projects can serve as a prism for detecting cultural perceptions of marriage among young educated Palestinian-Arab women today. Their artistic expression, accompanied by their verbal explanations, can be perceived by us as a social arena in which ideals of identity, status and norms are conveyed both consciously and unconsciously.
The importance of marriage and motherhood are still strongly present in Palestinian-Arab society despite changes in women`s status that have taken place in recent decades. Thus, these topics were found central in their projects. Working on them independently at home, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, forced the students to profoundly contemplate on their current phase in life – being newly married and young mothers.
Analyzing the projects by visual tools drawn from semiotics and art history, we argue that these students used this platform to broadly negotiate their personal life. The projects shed light on their point of view regarding their migration from their parents` home to their new one, their wedding, pregnancy and on a small scale also their mothering. Their various expressions embody some tension between socio-cultural patriarchal expectations and personal feelings. This tension highlights higher education as an agent undermining their cultural origins, and yet it is scarcely transformed in the projects into direct criticism on gender roles and social perceptions. The study provides a scrutinized examination of social processes which Palestinian-Arab young educated women are experiencing in their current family`s structures.