Tarwida

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: 

Read more about Samia Halaby 

Follow Samia Halaby 

Read her book, Drawing the Kafr Qasem Massacre

Samia Halaby wins Munch Award for Artistic Freedom (2025) 

"We Refused" exhibition — Doha/Antwerp 

Read more about the Kafr Qasem massacre 

Learn more about Vera Tamari 

Learn more about Mona Saudi 

Learn more about Rima Nasir Tarazi 

Learn more about Sophie Halaby 

 

Episode Chapters: 

00:00:00 The apple seeds recipe her grandmother never got to share 

00:00:33 Introducing Samia Halaby 

00:02:00 Born in 1936, the year of the Arab Revolt 

00:03:15 Growing up in Palestine: 11 years of visual wonder 

00:05:30 Synesthesia: seeing color and shape in sound 

00:10:15 Her grandmother: role model, matriarch & the autobiography Apple Seeds 

00:12:30 Witnessing the Nakba: her father injured in Jaffa, January 1948 

00:14:45 How she became an artist — "I backed into it" 

00:17:00 Rejecting self-expression: art as craft, not therapy 

00:21:30 Nature, Islamic architecture & the evolution of her abstract work 

00:28:00 "Palestine is the Anvil" — the painting behind her 

00:30:00 Documenting the Kafr Qasem Massacre through drawing 

00:35:45 Gaza and Massacre of the Innocents (2024) 

00:38:15 Political posters: pro-Palestine propaganda and activism 

00:48:00 Pioneering computer art in the 1980s — and why AI is a hard no 

00:53:30 Academia, galleries & who really decides what art matters 

00:57:15 Indiana University censorship & Michigan State's removal of Six Golden Heroes 

01:01:15 Black is Beautiful (1969) and its Venice Biennale appearance in 2024 

01:05:00 Message to young Palestinian artists: "Be confident. Don't let them stop you."

"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:

Learn more about The Palestine Museum US (Woodbridge, CT)

Learn more about the Palestine Museum Scotland (Edinburgh branch, 13a Dundas Street)

Dive deeper into the exhibit, "Gaza, No Words"

Read more about Faisal Saleh

Palestinian History Tapestry (merger partner, original 12-year tapestry project)

Scotsman coverage of the Edinburgh branch opening 

New Haven Arts Paper profile on the museum's growth from Woodbridge to Edinburgh

Donate/support the museum

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.

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Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast

Relevant links and resources:

Visit El-Funoun’s website and take a look at their online shop

Read Fi Ma'ma'ana al-Raqs (In the Mayhem of Dance) 

Follow El-Funoun (@elfunoun_troupe)

Learn more about Ghassan Kanafani

Learn more about the Popular Arts Center

Productions Mentioned

Ya Sahib At-Tair (2025)

Marj Bin Amer

Mash'al

Talat (Bara'em Al-Funoun)