Khalil Rabah and Suha Shoman

Khalil Rabah

Drawing on the tools and aesthetics of museology, archival systems, and institutional display, Rabah constructs speculative frameworks that question how histories are written and how knowledge is shaped by power.

A central component of his practice is the ongoing project The Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind—a fictional institution that operates as both artwork and critique. Through this and related works, Rabah explores the erasure and fabrication of narratives within colonial and postcolonial contexts, particularly in relation to Palestine.

The notion of displacement, both political and philosophical, is central to his work. By incorporating materials such as olive trees, soil, and stone, Rabah situates these symbols of resilience and rootedness within globalised art institutions, emphasising their forced dislocation. Through his archives and artifacts, he proposes fragmented, subjective counter-histories that resist official erasures.

Beyond his artistic practice, Rabah has played a central role in shaping cultural institutions in Palestine. He is a co-founder of the Al Ma'mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, and as initiator and artistic director of the Riwaq Biennale, he has activated and restored historic sites across Palestinian villages, turning heritage restoration into an act of cultural resilience within a fragmented landscape.

Evidence is an installation that reflects on the olive tree as both a living organism and a symbol of rootedness, resilience, and displacement. At its centre is an engraved marble plate, depicting either the roots or the leafless twigs of the tree-depending on the viewer's position-inviting a shifting perspective on belonging and loss.

Testimonies features 80 delicate oil pastels on paper of severed olive tree trunks that appear almost anatomical, rendered as organic remnants. Together, these elements speak to cycles of growth and destruction, and the olive tree's enduring cultural, political, and ecological presence.

Suha Shoman

Suha Shoman’s multifaceted practice spans visual art, film, and institution-building, rooted in a deep commitment to supporting contemporary Arab artists and fostering critical cultural dialogue across the region.

Born in Jerusalem just four years before the Nakba, her life and practice are profoundly shaped by displacement. Her works are often meditative and politically charged, exploring the interwoven themes of land, time, and memory. From her early abstract paintings inspired by the timeless landscapes of Petra to her later video works addressing exile and loss with unmediated directness, this duality between abstraction and activism, memory and testimony defines Shoman's legacy.

Her artistic journey was decisively shaped by her studies under the influential artist Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid, whom Shoman met after moving to Jordan in 1974. Her transition from painting to video in the early 2000s was not a rupture but an evolution. The luminous abstraction she had developed found new life in video installations that expanded her inquiry into the immaterial: time, light, and memory.

In parallel with her art-making, Shoman has played a transformative role in shaping cultural infrastructure in the Arab world. In 1988, recognising the needs of artists in conflict zones, she launched, together with her husband Khalid, an initiative to provide refuge and support for artists fleeing war and violence in their countries. This initiative laid the foundation for the opening in 1993 of Darat al Funun, a home for the arts and artists from the Arab world, which has since become a major platform for contemporary artists, thinkers, and researchers from the region.

Through residencies, exhibitions, and public programs, she has fostered spaces for experimentation, reflection, and resistance supporting generations of artists offering them a stable ground to continue their practice and find a community.

Her video Bayyaratina (Our Orange Grove) recounts the story of her grandfather's orange groves in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza, which he started planting in 1929. Merging personal testimony, archival imagery, and realities on the ground, the film traces the life of the orchard, tended across three generations, and its eventual total destruction by occupying military forces, beginning with the early years of the Second Intifada in 2002 and continuing to 2009. Through poetic narration and striking visual contrasts, the film evokes both beauty and rupture rooted in soil and exile, past and present. Bayyaratina conjures a landscape shaped by memory, displacement, and loss.