Sundos al-Rajabi Uses Art to Eternalize Jerusalem’s Depopulated Palestinian Villages

In the Ras al-Amud area of Silwan, south of al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem’s Old City, Jerusalemite visual artist Sundos al-Rajabi spends hours every day at the art and ceramics studio that she founded in her home in 2020. The studio has become a destination for lovers of Jerusalem’s landmarks and Islamic motifs, and those who enjoy exploring or tracing their roots to the Jerusalem’s villages depopulated by Israel in 1947–49.

In her home, filled with handmade works that she crafted herself, Sundos spoke with Jerusalem Story about her artistic journey, which first began with challenges and eventually culminated with the launch of her pioneering studio project.

Sundos was born in Jerusalem on July 19, 1991. Her grandparents originate from the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank. She spent her childhood and completed her education in Jerusalem, before relocating to Nablus to study drawing and painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at An-Najah National University. She graduated with her bachelor’s degree in 2014.

Answering the question “Why did you choose art?,” Sundos explained that art classes at school were a constant source of inspiration and served as a form of psychological therapy, allowing her to create freely and give her very best.1

The classes shaped Sundos’s future and guided her decision to pursue a degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts—a choice her family initially opposed, urging her to “make art a hobby, not an academic or professional path.”

Undeterred, Sundos insisted on following this specialization; she considers her decision to be the best she ever made, describing art as her “safe haven and spiritual therapy.” “When I work in the studio, I feel a sense of balance and inner stability, as I disconnect from the outside world,” she said.

From 2014 to 2018, Sundos worked in several educational institutions in Jerusalem, particularly with children. However, she was introduced to a different world of art in 2017 when she traveled to the Turkish city of İznik during an educational trip to a ceramics factory.

During her visit to the factory, she received training in the basics of ceramics, and Sundos quickly discovered a new passion for this form of art. The experience marked a turning point in her professional life and artistic career as she developed a deep fascination with ceramic art. Upon returning to Jerusalem, she decided to merge painting with ceramics, inspiring her to establish her studio.

Sundus launched the small studio as a space to cultivate this passion, shaping ceramics and bringing her own ideas and designs to life. In the first six months after opening, she devoted herself to intensive self-learning, having acquired only the basic foundations of the craft during her time in Turkey.

She began by painting Jerusalem’s landmarks on ceramic pieces, then developed the idea of collecting plant leaves during her visits to Jerusalem’s depopulated villages of 1948 and transferring their imprints onto clay (ceramics). Reflecting on this experience, Sundus said, “The imprints of plant leaves added a magical touch to the ceramics, and the experience was truly inspiring. I continue to work along this artistic line to this day.”

Sundos collected leaves from olive, oak, carob, pomegranate, grape, fig, daisy, mulberry, sage, mint, thyme, and narcissus trees, as well as the iresine herbstii (Herbst’s bloodleaf) and bellflower trees. She picked them all from Jerusalem’s depopulated villages; most notably Lifta, Qaluniya, ‘Allar, Khirbat al-Lawz, Sataf, and Suba.

The pomegranate tree leaf holds a special place in Sundos’s heart, especially those she picks from the depopulated village of Qaluniya, where the blossoms are particularly beautiful before the fruit ripens.

We asked about her connection to Jerusalem’s depopulated villages. She told us that although she does not originate from any of them, and her family did not experience displacement or refugeehood, Sundos revealed that the stories of the Nakba deeply move her, and that every Palestinian has inevitably been connected to this tragedy and tries to convey it in his or her own way.

“I found that printing plant leaves onto clay is a way to illustrate the relationship between land and memory. Every botanical imprint carries the memory of a place, the story of a land, and what remains of the lives our ancestors lived there.”

Sundos gathered plant leaves from the village areas, and then imprinted them onto clay, preserving the intricate details of their veins and the curves of their petals, to present them with a calm visual touch that evokes the spirit of the villages and their landmarks.

Speaking about the challenges of working with plant material, she explained that the leaves must be picked during the tree’s fruit-harvesting season and printed onto the clay while it is still fresh and retains a specific texture—no later than two or three days after picking.

Sundos creates her ceramic artworks through a multistage process:

• It begins with rolling out the clay piece.
• Next, the plant leaf is imprinted onto it, and the piece is shaped.
• The piece is then placed into the kiln for the “first firing,” which lasts for 12 hours, followed by cooling inside the kiln for an additional 24 hours.
• After the initial kiln process is completed, the coloring stage begins.
• This is followed by placing the art pieces in another kiln for a second firing for seven hours.
• The ceramics must then cool inside that second kiln for another 24 hours.
• Finally, the clay is glazed—a process of adding a glassy layer to the surface of the ceramic pieces to create a smooth, glossy finish.

Sundos feels that she is honoring and preserving the depopulated villages by printing their leaves onto clay. In addition to printing plant leaves, Sundos also excels in printing Islamic geometric motifs and hand-painting Jerusalem’s landmarks on ceramic pieces.

Recently, Sundos sparked the curiosity of many Jerusalemites to learn more about Jerusalem’s depopulated villages when she held an art exhibit titled “Between Water and Clay” at the Turkish Cultural Center in the Old City on December 13, 2025. The exhibit featured dozens of artworks showing imprints of trees and plant leaves from various depopulated villages in the Jerusalem area, in addition to watercolor paintings depicting features and landmarks from those villages.

Sundos aspires to one day establish an art and ceramics studio outside her home, where she can welcome a wider audience and exchange art, experiences, and expertise with a larger group of visitors, art lovers, and those who value Jerusalem’s distinctive character and rich history.