“Self-portrait: Among the exiled”

Hand-stitched Palestinian tatreez and selfie photo collage on canvas, 2024 (42cm x 52cm)

This piece is about a lot of things… but I mostly wanted to focus on the millions of Palestinians in exile. 

The flowers are intentionally “off” in major ways—it should make you feel unsettled to look at this. I plucked the flowers from a bunch of traditional patterns (do you see the Gazan ‘scissors and roses’, Cleopatra’s poison ring, etc?), from my mother’s Gardens Dress, as well as various other dresses made by Palestinians and hacked them up carelessly. The flowers are violently dispossessed from their origins, similar to the generations-long exile of Palestinians. Some are more whole, while others are barely identifiable. This piece is not geometric or neat, because our dispossession has been utterly senseless. The Gaza pattern eclipses the rest, as it should right now. Some flowers are more together and others seem apart and isolated.

I made the colors clash and chaotic to illustrate how we in exile do our best to hold on to our recipes, traditions, language, art, history, stories… but we (and how we practice our traditions) have been forever changed by our diaspora environments, whether we like it or not. 

I felt utterly useless when I started this piece as I watched the genocide in Gaza unfold in real time on social media. That’s why the picture I took of myself is a mixture of rage, exhaustion, and sadness. The recordings of Hind and the pictures of Sidra, Mahmoud and Hamdan (among many others) are forever seared into these stitches. Finishing this piece, I still feel utterly useless, the genocide is still ongoing, but now my fingers are scarred and sore. 

While making this piece, I also thought about my distrust and contempt for people who look at us and our traditions in an Orientalist way; those who stand with us only when we are ‘pretty’, ‘nice’, and ‘behaved’, performing for a ‘European gaze’, are not really with us at all. People who set conditions make for the worst company. Lean on true allies and communities of support—they are out there.

*Exhibited at Tendermeshh “Alter-Natives” at 90mil in Berlin, 17-18 January 2025.

*This piece was featured as the album cover for “EP 1” by The Red Clinic.