Solomon Souza


Solomon Souza is a British street artist. He is best known for spray painting portraits of contemporary and historical figures on the metal shutters of the Mahane Yehuda Market in Jerusalem, turning them into an after-hours attraction.

Early life and education

Solomon Souza was born in London and grew up in the neighbourhood of Hackney. His mother, painter Keren Souza-Kohn, is the daughter of Goan artist Francis Newton Souza, a founder of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group. Souza came to Israel at age 17 to study in a yeshiva in the Nachlaot neighbourhood of Jerusalem, adjacent to the market. Largely self-taught, he has done graffiti and spray paint art since age 15.
As of July 2018, Souza had spray-painted more than 250 of the 360 shutters in the market. Each painting takes two to four hours to complete. Souza usually completes three murals per night.
Subjects include contemporary and historical figures, including Yossi Banai, Roseanne Barr, Menachem Begin, David Ben-Gurion, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Meyer Lansky, Emma Lazarus, Bob Marley, Matisyahu, Golda Meir, Moses Montefiore, Dona Gracia Nasi, Daniel Pearl, Jonathan Pollard, Naomi Shemer, Steven Spielberg, Hannah Szenes, Henrietta Szold, and Bracha Zefira. There are nearly one dozen rabbinical portraits, including Mordechai Eliyahu, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Yitzhak Kaduri, Maimonides, Shneur Zalman of Liadi, and Ovadia Yosef. Arab personalities are also represented, including Lucy Aharish, Sheikh Fari al-Jabari of Hebron, Si Ali Sakkat, and the Queen of Sheba. Biblical paintings include Moses, Solomon, and panels depicting the seven days of creation. Some of the early paintings are of the stall owners themselves, or their grandfathers, by personal request.
The murals have become an after-hours and Saturday attraction, when stalls are closed and the shutters and metal doors are visible.

Other projects

In December 2019, The Jerusalem Post reported that Souza had been invited by the special projects curator for the Serendipity Art Festival in Goa, India, to do a similar spray-paint art project there. Souza will create paintings of important figures and "forgotten characters" in Goan history.

Gallery