Photo by Hussam HasanI am an object-maker and cultural manager. I grew up in Bethlehem, Palestine and I currently live in Amman, Jordan. I hold a master’s degree in architecture from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture Paris Val-de-Seine.
Over the past decade, I worked with many organizations and partners in setting up and running a large portfolio of projects within the cultural and creative industries such as residency management, curation, craft product development, and training and mentorship in product design.
I am interested in actively developing projects rooted in communities, prioritizing networks of artisans, designers, and creatives in general working together, and contributing to the creation of bold and meaningful work from our region.
This website serves two purposes: on one hand, it showcases my experience, ranging from culture and design management to institutional support, and on the other hand, it highlights my newly established brand in object-making.
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After graduating from architecture school in 2011, I spent the first few years of my career working as an architect. However, I soon found myself strongly drawn to arts and culture. This shift was driven by my conviction that this new context would foster fresh ideas, suggest alternatives to existing systems, and initiate change.
Growing up in Palestine, I felt a vital need to break free from political and social systems of oppression and to create a space for dreaming of other possible futures, and for finding a voice to speak the language of community, solidarity, and togetherness. I found resonance in cultural and educational projects that imagined alternatives, formed communities, and shared friendships.
Over the past decade, I engaged in a variety of projects spanning art, design, and craft. My expertise, grounded in practical management experience, is primarily concentrated in Palestine and Jordan, although I also undertake consultancies in other regions of the Arab world. The following pages showcase a selection of my projects and highlight areas of proficiency.
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I specialize in cultural and creative industries, and offer strategic guidance to organizations. Check my work.In March 2022, sometime around my 35th birthday, I started playing with stone and marble while I spent a few months in Bethlehem, as a way to also prepare for a design workshop I was giving in Gaza a few months later which focused on the possibilities offered by locally available materials for product design and export. At that moment, taking stock of my previous work experience, I wanted to give meaning to numerous loose ends and professional projects left unfinished or which I wanted to pursue in a more diligent way.
There was a pressing need to shape, and perhaps reshape, all these diverse interests into a coherent whole and also a strong desire to work locally, with local materials and local artisans. Perhaps as a way to keep a conversation going with my home, the place where I grew up and had my first encounters with craft.
In my professional career, I spent many hours in artisans’ workshops and learnt from them how to speak the language of crafts, the nuances between seemingly similar materials, and the values they attributed to artisanship. I witnessed how these masters evolve their practice and ensure it stays alive, through their work, the materials they use, the machinery they employ, the distribution of tasks within the workshop, the relationship between the apprentices and the master, the objects they make, and the decision to come to work every day. In short, I gained insight into the secrets of their trades. These encounters introduced me to the art and science of object-making, and since then I have had a desire to expand and deepen my knowledge of various craft practices and explore them both separately and combined, to create functional and beautiful objects.
After multiple aborted attempts, an enormous amount of courage as well as support from people around me to start my own studio, I am putting forward a platform through which I want to play with materials, explore craft practices further, collaborate with artisans across different countries and ecosystems, and most importantly learn. This website will allow me to document these learnings, and try to make sense of them, as I grow my understanding of how to make objects and explore the possibilities of crafts.
My projects are built upon interests that I have been nurturing, and perhaps archived for several years. They have come to the surface now as I extract ideas and inspiration from my previous experiences for the future, and also as an imminent and urgent need to do something.