Jessica Azizeh: Telling the Stories of Heritage through Pieces of Clay

From a simple lump of clay, Jessica Azizeh begins a journey in search of Palestinian identity told in a different way. This designer and artist does not repeat familiar ceramic motifs nor does she replicate what fills the markets. Instead, she reinterprets heritage through a contemporary lens, giving clay new forms that preserve its spirit while presenting it in a design language that belongs to the reality she lives as a Jerusalemite. In her hands, clay becomes more than raw material; it is a means of preserving memory and reshaping it into a living story still unfolding.

While working on a new clay piece, Jessica reflects: “Clay is the material I’ve been most successful in harnessing for my work. Recently, I realized that I don’t let clay control me; I control it, shape it to serve my work, even though it’s a material that resists control. I love clay, and I enjoy combining it with other materials.”1

Jessica was born in Jerusalem on June 24, 1999. She was raised by her mother, Suha Khoury, after the death of her father, who passed away before his daughter reached the age of two.

While at school, Jessica practiced her love of art through drawing, but, as she said, no one there paid much attention to this hobby or tried to nurture it. However, before she left school, she had already begun looking for the right university to pursue her education. She decided to move to Tel Aviv to study industrial design at the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art.

Although she is only 27 years old, her life has been full of experiences that shaped the person she is today.

Jessica spoke at length about her educational journey, both at the bachelor’s and master’s levels. Speaking about the former, she said that she began studying industrial design in a cohort of 28 students, only 4 of whom were Palestinian. By her second year, she was the only Palestinian among a group of Israeli-Jewish students.

She said her university projects always emerged from the reality she lives as a Palestinian in Jerusalem; she was even accused of bringing politics into the university’s halls. Jessica smiled, then clarified: “But I was conveying the reality [in which] I live. My projects were about that reality, not about politics.”

Clay became the material through which she communicated what she wanted to say, with the support of a teacher who accompanied her through two courses that focused on this raw medium. Jessica recalls that her first clay piece involved designing a single form that, when repeated, would create a larger whole: “I designed one piece, and as it was repeated, voids began to form. I came to see those voids as the sites of olive trees uprooted from the land, and I titled the work Uprooted.”

She remembers her teacher’s reaction at the time: “‘You’re the student who’s going to make political art,’ she said.” The teacher also encouraged her to engage the university community about her artwork addressing occupation and the uprooting of trees.

Her graduation project for the bachelor’s degree was titled Stateless Heritage, and it was made out of a collection of jars in which the artist reimagined Palestinian handicrafts through a contemporary perspective. The project combined her design practice with the expertise of three Palestinian artisans working in traditional crafts: glassblowing from Jaba‘, pottery making from Jaffa, and embroidery from Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem.

Since restrictions on movement limit the artisans’ ability to reach other places, these objects represent the only site where their practices can meet today. It is for this reason that Jessica engraved the topographical maps of the three areas onto the surfaces of the three jars, turning them into a space where scattered geographies, people, and their crafts could meet—because connecting them in real life seems impossible.

The project explored how heritage can be activated through design, highlighting the possibility of renewing marginalized crafts. Through it, she was accepted into the master’s program in ceramic and glass art at Konstfack—University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Sweden.

This young Jerusalemite transformed a room whose stone walls are more than 100 years old into “Studio Azizeh,” a space in Sheikh Jarrah that houses her designs and artwork. Over time, it will gradually expand to welcome interested visitors who wish to take part in the exceptional workshops she plans to organize.

Jessica returned to Jerusalem in the summer of 2025, but not before graduating top of her class in the master’s program, where she built another unique project. Its roots began with the latest war on Gaza; it has since grown and recently displayed at a group exhibition—My Grandmother and Her Adornments—held at the Palestinian Art Court—al-Hoash in Jerusalem.

Blessings from Palestine consists of a body of ceramic works that evokes Palestinian jewelry as material archives carrying the culture, identity, and values of its people. Through contemporary ceramic practice, the project reimagines historical jewelry, breathing new life into it by transforming its forms into tangible pieces.

The artist believes that jewelry has always played a role beyond adornment: it bears the weight of legacy and embodies and transmits people’s beliefs, values, and collective memory. In this way, these objects are brought into the present and made available for renewed connection. They transmit knowledge and contribute to the continuity of a marginalized culture under pressure by conditions of forced fragmentation.

Blessings from Palestine embraces cultural heritage as a living being, not a forgotten, frozen antiquity. From this perspective, her project becomes living heritage in the making—heritage that lives, breathes, and renews itself with every act. It reveals how craft and material culture nourish identity and give people the capacity to remain steadfast in the face of endless attempts at erasure.

“The ceramic pieces become bridges between the known and the unknown, between past and present, between what can be touched and what can only be felt in the heart. Through clay, they reach out to us from the depth of time, inviting us to touch what once was and to participate in shaping what will be. It’s as if they are telling us that the story is not over,” Jessica explains.

Blessings from Palestine also includes a book with the same title, which takes readers on a visual journey through the intertwined stories of women and their jewelry. Through meticulous curation, the book brings together archival photographs of Palestinian women adorned with jewelry and compares them with images of the same jewelry as it exists today, separated from the women and places to which it once belonged. The book reunites materials and objects that have been scattered across collections, museums, and archives around the world, portraying a culture facing deep fragmentation. Jessica selected 12 photographs out of the 40 included in the book and installed them on one of the walls of the My Grandmother and Her Adornments exhibit.

So what are this young artist’s ambitions?

“I want the studio to become a space through which I can share research-based content about local material culture, because I feel there is a lack of information,” she told Jerusalem Story. That is why Jessica tries, through her work, to build upon what already exists and not in isolation from the past. In her view, if someone practices a traditional craft without building on what came before and without grounding it in values and research, they are not truly continuing a body of work that carries knowledge to the present and future generations.

“I will organize workshops that are not merely aimed at producing transient objects but at conveying concepts that encourage participants to hold on to heritage and build upon it,” she explains.

Before we left her studio, Jessica placed pieces of clay into the kiln for their first firing, after which the pieces then go through several more stages before returning to the kiln for a second firing. During that time, she said, she was preparing to participate in three upcoming exhibits. She shared that she always begins her work by listening to cultural materials, to the land, and to stories about the relationships between people and their belongings. Through this approach, the works that emerge are not only acts of preservation or reinvention but extensions of a collective cultural identity.

To learn more about Jessica Azizeh and her art, visit her website.