This graphite drawing brings together objects of memory, displacement, and faith within the intimate setting of a Palestinian olive-wood carver’s shop. At its center hang a pair of Nakba keys, recalling the keys carried and preserved by Palestinians displaced from their homes during the Nakba of 1948. Often passed from one generation to the next, these keys have become tangible witnesses to homes and villages left behind, and enduring symbols of memory, belonging, and the hope of return. Above them, a family photograph locates this larger history within the lives of particular people, suggesting how collective memory is carried through families and across generations.
On the adjacent shelf, a carved figure at prayer stands below fragments of patterned floor tiles from former Palestinian homes, recovered after washing ashore along the coast of Jaffa. Removed from the domestic spaces they once adorned, the fragments become small archaeological traces of interrupted lives. Their geometric patterns echo the pronounced grain of the olive wood surrounding the other objects, visually binding house, land, craft, and memory together. As part of the Sumud exhibition, the drawing considers steadfastness not as something abstract or heroic, but as an everyday act of keeping: preserving a key, salvaging a fragment, carving an image, saying a prayer, and refusing to allow what has been lost to disappear from memory.
