Solomon Souza

Solomon Souza (born 1993) is a British-Israeli street artist. He is best known for spray painting portraits of contemporary and historical figures on the metal shutters of the Mahane Yehuda Market ("The Shuk") in Jerusalem, turning them into an after-hours attraction.

Solomon Souza was born in London and grew up in the neighborhood of Hackney. His mother, painter Keren Souza-Kohn, is the daughter of Indian artist Francis Newton Souza, a founder of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group. Solomon and his mother moved briefly to Efrat, and he returned to London to complete high school. He returned to Israel at age 17 to study in a yeshiva in the Nachlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem, adjacent to the market. Largely self-taught, Souza has done graffiti and spray paint art since age 15.

The idea for painting the closed shutters of stalls in the Mahane Yehuda Market was that of Souza's friend Berel Hahn, who envisioned the project as a way of livening up the market after-hours. Souza began painting the corrugated shutters and metal doors at night in January 2015, while Hahn arranged permission from the shopkeepers. Souza and Hahn rely on donations to cover the cost of materials.

As of July 2016, Souza had spray-painted more than 150 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 (painted upside-down), 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, and Henrietta Szold. 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.