About Paradise Shoman
Art for a more human world
Paradise Shoman is the founder and artist of Orphic Herz. She lives and works in Braga, Portugal.
She is Jordanian. She was raised in the United Arab Emirates and lived in Dubai for more than twenty years.
Making things was part of home. Her mother, her aunts and her grandmother encouraged her in painting and crafts, in decorating the house, and in designing clothes and furniture.
She studied English language and literature at Petra University in Jordan, graduating in 1996, and later spent fourteen years working with the Red Crescent.
In 2019 she moved to Braga. There her art grew, made with natural and recycled materials: chocolate, coffee, mandarin peel, thyme, real leaves and petals, and recycled paper.
The inspirations she names are plain ones: family, nature, the night, longing for home, humanity, life between cultures, games, books and stories, and coffee and chocolate.
“No matter where I go, I feel a connection between myself, the sea, and the trees. I feel like the trees talk to me. When I see a tree, I see a piece of art.”
Along the way
- 1996
- Degree in English language and literature, Petra University, Jordan.
- 2019
- Moves to Braga, Portugal.
- 2020–2026
- Exhibits her work in Portugal, including Porto and Lisbon in 2022.