What happens when a city itself becomes an archive? In this episode, architect and historian Nadi Abusaada takes us through different Palestinian cities to explore how material traces can help reconstruct a history marked by destruction, displacement, and erasure.

The conversation begins with Abusaada's installation for Amman Design Week 2026, which reconstructs a lost fountain from Jerusalem's Palace Hotel using one surviving ceramic tile designed by Armenian ceramicist David Ohannessian. He then discusses his work curating the Palestinian Museum’s permanent exhibition, which challenges the idea of permanence and instead explores the ongoing process of making Palestinian history.

From there, we explore Palestinian landscapes and agricultural terraces as evidence of generations of knowledge, before turning to Jaffa and its transformation from a cosmopolitan Palestinian city into a caricatured version of itself, used as a backdrop for Israeli cultural production and gentrification.

The episode ultimately asks what it means to preserve history without freezing it, to reclaim the past without turning it into a fantasy, and to build contemporary spaces that are connected to the places, people, and histories that came before them.

This episode is produced in collaboration with Amman Design Week, opening its fourth edition October 2–17 under the theme "Accumulations."

The episode was recorded on August 3rd, 2026. Watch the episode on YouTube here.

Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and more, about their very own Palestine.

In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.

Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast

Relevant links & resources:

• Follow Nadi Abusaada on Instagram (@nadi.saadeh)
• Visit the Palestinian Museum
• Explore Amman Design Week and its 2026 edition, "Accumulations"
• Check out Tawfik Canaan’s amulet collection
• Read Samia Halabi’s article on Mustafa Al Hallaj
• Learn more about Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Al Jafari and his film Recollection
• Read Nadi Abusaada's article on Palestinian terraces
• Learn more about The Destruction of Jerusalem’s Moroccan Quarter
• Read more about David Ohannessian

EPISODE CHAPTERS:
 01:33 – Introducing Nadi Abusaada and his connection to Jerusalem 
 05:00 – David Ohannessian and the Palace Hotel fountain
 08:27 – Reconstructing Palestinian history from fragments
 11:15 – Rethinking the "permanent" exhibition at the Palestinian Museum
 16:30 – Mustafa Al Hallaj: when sculpture becomes impossible to carry
 18:52 – Searching for Palestine in Israeli and colonial archives
 21:48 – Palestinian terraces as material evidence
 26:21 – Jaffa: the destruction and gentrification of a cosmopolitan Palestinian city
 32:51 – Is Palestinian architecture more Palestinian or Arab?
 38:20 – Why do we romanticize the Arab past?

Palestinian artist Dima Srouji doesn't work in one discipline — she works in scale. In this episode, we sit down with Srouji to trace her path from architecture school at Yale to becoming one of the region's leading voices in glass art, archaeology, and material heritage.

Srouji discusses the pivotal year of 2016 — leaving corporate architecture in New Haven and New York to move back to Palestine — and how a chance studio visit to a glassblowing family in Jaba' (who were, at the time, making chemistry beakers and bongs) launched a decade-long collaboration that evolved into serious research on ancient Roman and early Islamic glass traditions across Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria.

The conversation moves through the differences between Hebron and Jaba' glassmaking techniques, Srouji's forthcoming installation of 100 glass snails and figs at Qasr al-Abd for Amman Design Week 2026, and her ongoing work replicating looted Palestinian artifacts — including pieces from the Tell Ajul excavation — for permanent display at the Palestinian Museum. Srouji and Tala also discuss how Israeli archaeological practice has been used as a tool of land grabbing and erasure, from Sebastia to Silwan, and Srouji's recent work as a production designer reconstructing 1930s Silwan for a Palestinian feature film.

This episode is produced in collaboration with Amman Design Week, opening its fourth edition October 2–17 under the theme "Accumulations."

This episode is hosted by Tala Elissa. Our associate producers are Zeena Shehadeh and Ahmed Ashour. Lead producer is Tala Elissa. Executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Social media by Lara Dihmis. Social media VO by Afaf Shawwa Bibi. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna. Intro music by Terez Sliman. 

The episode was recorded on August 3rd, 2026. Watch the episode on YouTube here. 

Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and more, about their very own Palestine.

In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.

Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast

Relevant links & resources:

• Check out more of Dima Srouji’s work (dimasrouji.com) and follow her on socials (@dimasrouji) 
  • Ghosts collection (V&A/Met/Penn Museum replica project): dimasrouji.com/ghosts
  • Bio & profile, Royal College of Art: rca.ac.uk/more/staff/dima-srouji
  • Profile, Lawrie Shabibi gallery: lawrieshabibi.com/artists/187-dima-srouji
  • "Meet the Palestinian Architect Creating Ethereal Glass Vessels," Galerie Magazine: galeriemagazine.com/dima-srouji
• Explore more about Amman Design Week (ammandesignweek.com) and their upcoming exhibition, “Accumulations” 
• Learn more about Sebastia: 
  • UNESCO World Heritage Centre listing: whc.unesco.org/en/list/1809
  • Al Jazeera, "Will UNESCO's heritage listing halt Israeli plans for Sebastia?": aljazeera.com/news/2026/7/27
  • WAFA, official Palestinian announcement: english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/172880
• Support Save Silwan (@savesilwan) 
• Read Nadia Abu El-Haj’s book, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (2001) 
• Learn more about Palestinian artist and art historian, Kamal Boullata

Few artists have captured the soul of Palestine the way Sliman Mansour has. His paintings featuring olive trees, stone terraces, mud, and the steadfast women of the land have carried Palestine across generations and borders. In this conversation, Mansour looks back on his childhood as well as the mischief and hardships that shaped him. A pioneer of contemporary Palestinian art and a teacher who rooted creativity in local materials, he speaks with humor and sharp honesty about what art means to him, sharing not only his achievements but also his moments of fragility and disappointments. 

This episode is hosted by Tala Elissa. Tarwida’s lead producer is Tala Elissa. Our executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Our associate producer is Zeena Shehadeh. Social media by Leen Karadsheh. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna. This conversation was conducted in Arabic and recorded on July 8, 2025. You can watch it with English subtitles on YouTube through this link. Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, culinary practitioners and more about their very own Palestine. In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be. Follow us on @tarwidapodcast 

This episode was originally published on September 15th, 2025. Listen to this episode on YouTube here. 

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Relevant links and Resources: 

- Follow Sliman Mansour on Instagram @sliman.mansour Purchase Mansour’s artwork through his website (https://slimanmansour.com/palestinian...) or on Zawyeh (https://zawyeh.store/product-category...) 

- Learn more about Ismail Shammout (https://www.palquest.org/en/biography...) 

- Learn more about Bashar Khalaf (https://zawyeh.net/bashar-khalaf/)

"Establish our own discourse. Theirs is rotten. We don't need it."

That's Samia Halaby — Palestinian abstract painter, scholar, activist, and at 89, one of the most vital voices in contemporary art — speaking directly to the next generation of Palestinian artists. In today’s episode, Tala sits down with Samia for a wide-ranging conversation that spans childhood in Jerusalem, decades of painting and teaching, and a career defined as much by what the art world tried to suppress as by what it eventually had to celebrate.

Born in 1936 during the Arab Revolt in Palestine, Samia was displaced with her family at age 11 during the 1948 Nakba. Those first 11 years — absorbed visually, intensely, synesthetically — became the foundation for a lifetime of looking. Samia describes how as a child she assigned colors and shapes to sounds and how her grandmother's apple-seed recipe came to symbolize everything lost in 1948.

The episode moves through her development as a painter, her rejection of "self-expression" as a capitalist myth, her conviction that abstraction is a tool for understanding reality rather than decorating it, and the way she was backed into becoming an artist at her mother's encouragement. She discusses her landmark work on the Kafr Qasem massacre — a book of documentary drawings now published in Arabic — and the very different choice she made with Massacre of the Innocents (2024), an abstract response to Gaza where documentation wasn't needed because the world was already watching.

Tala and Samia also discuss the censorship that defined recent years: Indiana University's cancellation of her retrospective in December 2023, Michigan State's removal of Six Golden Heroes in 2024, and what she learned about institutional cowardice and the differences between administrations, professors, and students. As she puts it: "They handed me proof everlasting that they're racist."

This episode is hosted and produced by Tala Elissa. Our associate producer is Zeena Shehadeh. Executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Social media by Rajae Shehadeh. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna. Intro music by Terez Sliman. 

The episode was recorded on May 28th, 2026. Watch the episode on YouTube here.

Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and more, about their very own Palestine.

In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.

Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast

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Relevant links & resources: 

Episode Chapters: 

"We spent all our lives walking into other people's museums. The time had come to walk into our own."

Today, we sit down with Faisal Saleh — Palestinian entrepreneur, photographer, and founder of the Palestine Museum US — to talk about what it took to build the first permanent Palestinian museum in the Western Hemisphere, and what it means to tell Palestine's story through art when so much of the world refuses to look.

Faisal walks through his early life in Al-Bireh and the entrepreneurial instinct that eventually led him to found his own institution in Woodbridge, Connecticut in 2018. We discuss the founding of the Edinburgh branch on Dundas Street, the vandalism the museum has weathered, and two consecutive years of rejection from the Venice Biennale before this year's acceptance.

The centerpiece of the episode is the story behind the exhibit "Gaza, No Words" — a collection of 100 embroidered Tatreez panels created in a single year by 60 Palestinian women in refugee camps in Lebanon and the West Bank, documenting the Gaza genocide stitch by stitch. Faisal describes the process behind the panels, the emotional weight of the imagery, and why the exhibit's title was left intentionally wordless. He closes with his plans for a future Gaza Genocide Museum and a forthcoming book. 

This episode is hosted by Afaf Shawwa Bibi. Our associate producers are Zeena Shehadeh and Ahmed Ashour. Lead producer is Tala Elissa. Executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Social media by Rajae Shehadeh. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna. Intro music by Terez Sliman. 

The episode was recorded on May 28th, 2026. Watch the episode on YouTube here.

Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and more, about their very own Palestine.

In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.

Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast

Relevant links & resources:

In this episode of Tarwida, we sit down with Noora Baker, Head of Production at El-Funoun Palestinian Dance Troupe — one of the most celebrated Palestinian folk dance companies in the world, founded in 1979 with over 300 members and 16 major productions.

Noora takes us through her journey as a dancer since 1987, beginning at age seven during the First Intifada, to leading production on El-Funoun's latest work Ya Sahib Al-Tayr (2025). We explore the roots of Palestinian dabke, its evolution from village ritual to political symbol, and the tension between organic street dance and choreographed stage performance.

We also discuss how El-Funoun preserves Palestinian folklore, refusing politically conditioned funding, and the power of collective movement as a form of resistance. 

The episode is hosted and produced by Tala Elissa. Our associate producer Zeena Shehadeh. Lead producer is Tala Elissa. Executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Social media by Rajae Shehadeh. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna. Intro music by Terez Sliman. 

The episode was recorded on January 9th, 2026. Watch the episode on YouTube here. 

Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and more, about their very own Palestine.

In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.

-- 

Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast

Relevant links and resources:

Productions Mentioned

In this episode of Tarwida, we share a remarkable conversation with Dr. Salman Abu Sitta — cartographer, historian, and founder of the Palestine Land Society — recorded on the Makdisi Street podcast.

Dr. Abu Sitta was born in Al-Maa'in near Khan Yunis and was expelled from his home as a 10-year-old boy during the Nakba of 1948. Over the following 75 years, he transformed personal loss into one of the most comprehensive documentary projects on Palestine ever undertaken: mapping 1,200 villages, cataloguing 50,000 place names, opening boxes sealed since 1877, and calculating — with meticulous precision — that 88% of the land Palestinian refugees were expelled from remains effectively vacant today.

In this conversation, Dr. Abu Sitta speaks about oral history and the colonial archive, the meaning of UN Resolution 194, the legal and practical feasibility of the right of return, the fight to preserve UNRWA, and why the question of Palestine is, at its core, a question of people being kept from going home.

He is 85 years old. He was there. And he is still counting.

Thank you to the Makdisi Street podcast for allowing us to share this episode with the Tarwida audience. This episode is hosted by the Makdisi brothers, Kareem, Sari, and Ossama and produced by Sina. Intro by Afaf Shawwa Bibi. The episode was adapted by Tarwida associate producer Zeena Shehadeh. Lead producer is Tala Elissa. Executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Social media by Rajae Shehadeh. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna. Intro music by Terez Sliman. 

The episode was originally published on February 7th, 2024. 

Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and more, about their very own Palestine.

In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.

Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast

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Relevant links and Resources: 

Chapters: 

00:00:00 - Introduction 

00:01:00 Meet Dr. Salman Abu Sitta 

00:04:00 - A Family Rooted in Palestine 

00:07:00 - The Night of the Nakba 

00:09:00 - From Refugee to Scholar 

00:12:00 - Nationality: Uncertain 

00:15:00 - Excavating the Colonial Archive 

00:25:00 - They Carried the Memory in Their Head 

00:35:00 - The War on Archives 

00:39:00 - Rebuilding Palestine: The Architecture Competition 

00:43:00 - Renaming the Land 

00:47:00 - Resolution 194 and the Right of Return 

00:52:00 - 88% of Palestinian Village Sites Remain Vacant 

01:03:00 - UNRWA, Refugee Status, and the Fight Over 194 

01:23:00 - Liberation, Law, and Steadfastness

In this re-release of one of our favorite conversations from last year, multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and director of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, Amer Shomali, sits down for a conversation about art, identity, and resistance.

Amer shares his journey from a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to studying architecture at Birzeit University, and the chance encounter that redirected his life toward his true passion in art and film. We explore three of his most iconic works: the viral Visit Palestine poster (2009), the lipstick portrait of Leila Khaled (The Icon, 2011), and his acclaimed animated documentary The Wanted 18 - the story of 18 cows that became a symbol of non-violent Palestinian resistance during the First Intifada.

We then turn to the Palestinian Museum, which Amer took over as director on October 8th, 2023, just one day after the genocide in Gaza began. He speaks about the challenges of running a museum when 80% of the national collection has been looted, and 80% of the audience lives in diaspora, and how the museum is redefining what a cultural institution can be. From the living exhibition This Is Not an Exhibition featuring Gazan artists, to the open-source traveling exhibition Gaza Remains: The Story, to the Digital Archives now holding over 400,000 documents — this episode explores the necessity of cultural resilience.

This conversation was recorded on December 1st, 2024.

This episode is hosted by Afaf Shawwa Bibi. Tarwida’s lead producer is Tala Elissa. Our executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Our associate producers are Zeena Shehadeh and Ahmed Ashour. Social media by Leen Karadsheh. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna. Intro music by Terez Sliman. 

Tarwida Podcast is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, culinary practitioners and more about Creative Palestine. 

Relevant links and Resources: 

Bassem Khandaqji is a Palestinian novelist from Nablus who spent more than 2 decades in Israeli prison, sentenced to three life terms. In 2024, while still behind bars,  he won the international book prize for Arabic fiction (Arabic Booker Prize) for his novel Mask of the Sky (قناع بلون السماء). Released in October 2024 in a prisoner exchange deal, he now lives in exile in Cairo.

In this episode of Tarwida, Bassem Khandaqji speaks about writing novels under occupation, while writing was forbidden — drafting by hand at 4am, making three copies of every manuscript, and smuggling completed works out of detention. 

The conversation covers the cultural and academic life inside Israeli prisons, its destruction after October 7 — what Khandaqji calls cultural genocide. He discusses his novels in depth, including how he spent a year immersed in Hebrew-language media to write his Israeli protagonist — thinking in Hebrew, writing in Arabic. He introduces Adab al-Ishtibak — Literature of Engagement — a framework for anti-colonial literature that dismantles Zionist ideology. He reflects on Yaffa, Jerusalem, Palestinian exile, and Mahmoud Darwish, and discusses his next novel about late fellow prisoner Walid Daqqa.

باسم خندقجي روائي فلسطيني من نابلس، قضى أكثر من عقدين في السجون الإسرائيلية بحكم بثلاثة مؤبدات. في 2024، فاز وهو خلف القضبان بالجائزة العالمية للرواية العربية (البوكر العربي) عن روايته "قناع بلون السماء"، وأُفرج عنه في أكتوبر 2024 ضمن صفقة تبادل، ويعيش اليوم في المنفى بالقاهرة.

في هذه الحلقة من ترويدة، يتحدث خندقجي عن الكتابة تحت الاحتلال — يكتب بخط يده في الرابعة فجراً، ينسخ كل مخطوطة ثلاث مرات، ويهرّبها خارج الاحتجاز. يتناول الحياة الثقافية داخل السجون الإسرائيلية وما لحق بها من دمار بعد ال 7 من أكتوبر، وعاماً أمضاه منغمساً في الإعلام العبري لكتابة شخصيته الإسرائيلية، ومفهوم "أدب الاشتباك"، وروايته القادمة عن الأسير الشهيد وليد دقة.

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This episode is hosted and produced by Tala Elissa. Our executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Our associate producer is Zeena Shehadeh. Social media by Leen Karadsheh. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun.

This conversation was recorded in person on February 8, 2026, in Cairo. You can watch it with English subtitles on YouTube.

Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, and more, about their very own Palestine. In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.

Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast

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Relevant links and Resources: 

What made Tatreez — Palestinian embroidery — the symbol of Palestinian identity? Not ceramics, not glass blowing, not straw weaving. Why the stitch?

Today, we sit down with Palestinian artist and author Joanna Barakat, who has spent years chasing this question. She unravels the deep-seated significance of Tatreez (Palestinian embroidery). Once hand-stitched by women in rural villages to signal their status and environment, Tatreez underwent a radical transformation following the 1948 Nakba. 

The result is Narrative Threads (2025), an anthology featuring 24 living Palestinian artists who use tatreez in their work — from Sliman Mansour and Nabil Anani to artists working inside Gaza right now, embroidering evacuation maps in real time. 

Joanna shares how Palestinian artists in the 1960s intentionally elevated these traditional motifs into a collective national symbol to spark a sense of "Palestinian-ness" and resist cultural erasure.

Whether you grew up with Tatreez in your home or are just beginning to explore the language of each motif, this conversation offers a powerful look at how a centuries-old craft continues to evolve as a living archive of Palestinian existence.

This episode is hosted and produced by Tala Elissa. Our executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Our associate producer is Zeena Shehadeh. Social media by Leen Karadsheh. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna. 

This conversation was recorded on February 2nd, 2026. You can watch it on YouTube, here. 

Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, culinary practitioners and more about their very own Palestine.  

In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be. 

Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast

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Relevant links and Resources: 

Relevant Tarwida Episodes:

Chapters:

0:00       Introduction — the artists who painted around the rules

1:45       Meet Joanna Barakat — Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Abu Dhabi

4:00       Tatreez as an indigenous language — writing an autobiography in thread

7:00       Why Joanna grew up without tatreez in the house

8:30       Tatreez motifs and emojis — a new way to see the stitch

9:50       Before the Nakba — village life, regional dress, and the thobe

13:00    Trade routes, Bethlehem's gold thread, and regional variation of Tatreez

16:00    Personal creativity within the tradition — how women made the thobe their own

19:00    1948 and the 1960s  the rupture and the refugee camp dresses

21:30    How PLO-era artists made tatreez a national symbol

25:00    Machine embroidery — pros, cons, and how to tell the difference

30:30    Tatreez on denim — is modern fashion evolution or dilution?

32:45    Heartstrings — the painting Joanna stitched into her own skin

36:00    Reclaiming a motif — the book that never said "Palestine"

37:30    Tatreez Circle — how a community built itself one workshop at a time

40:00    Can you truly learn heritage through a screen?

44:00    COVID, October 2023, and the urgency of preservation

47:00    Narrative Threads — why this book needed to exist

49:30    How the  24 artists in Narrative Threads were chosen— and what connects them

53:30    Broken Weddings — the most powerful artwork in the book

57:00    Joanna's next body of work and future plans

58:30    How to find Tatreez Circle and join a workshop