I’m an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and daughter of Historic Palestine. My father was born in the village of Zarnouqa in AlRamleh. He was six years old when the Nakba forced his family to journey west and south, through Gaza, and Rafah, before escaping through Egypt as refugees. As a stateless person, he lived his life and raised his children, including mysel, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE.) My work is informed by my parent’s trauma and the ongoing erasure of my homeland Palestine. My critical art practice examines social, cultural, and political identity through the lens of diaspora, displacement, and intellectual exile.

I completed my undergraduate education in the UAE, earning a BSc in Visual Communications from the American University of Sharjah. I received an MFA in Interdisciplinary Art Media and Design from OCAD University in Canada, where I was the first person in my family to obtain citizenship.

My work acts as a commentary on social, cultural and political themes through critical graphic design praxis. Having lived most of my life in the Middle East before moving to Toronto and then Chicago, has allowed me to view my own culture as an outsider for the first time. This cultural, intellectual and visual shift has engendered a series of experimental projects that deal with notions of identity, diaspora and displacement and allow me to look at my being from the perspective of intellectual exile.

Photo by Nesreen

Working on Concrete Maps project