Tala Sandouka: A Jerusalemite Artist Weaving Memory from Straw

In a small studio in her home courtyard in Jerusalem, Tala Sandouka sits before a pile of straw, just as her grandfather once did. In her hands, the dry strands come alive as stools, not merely for people to sit on, but to carry them back to a time when families and neighbors sat for long hours, weaving stories with patience.

Tala’s distinctive artistic practice is not simply handicraft but a quiet attempt to hold onto her grandfather’s memories and traditions and preserve them in a city where they are at risk of being forgotten as society moves ahead toward modernism in furniture and interior design.

Tala was born in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina on July 26, 1984. She grew up and studied at Rosary Sisters’ High School and then went on to enroll at Al-Quds University, graduating in 2008 with a degree in fine arts.

At the beginning of her artistic career, she specialized in oil painting. A tragic traffic accident, however, which occurred while she was preparing for her solo exhibition in 2015, forced her to cancel the show, and she has stayed away from painting ever since.

“I still try, to this day, to understand what made me step away from painting, and I cannot reach a clear explanation,”1 she told Jerusalem Story. “I think it’s because the accident was linked to my preparation for a solo exhibition at the time.”

From 2015 until 2018, Tala continued searching for her passion until she participated in a workshop organized by Disarming Design from Palestine, a Belgium-based independent nonprofit that fosters the work of local artisans and designers in Palestine and then sells them from Europe, beyond borders, in an effort, as stated on its website, to “invest in participative design methods that contribute to decolonial futures.”2

In September 2019, the group subsequently organized an experiential event in the Old City of Birzeit called “The Real and the Absent,” consisting of four gatherings on local oral tradition and collective memory. Tala displayed some of her work.

“Here began the story of my artistic project. I had a strong attachment to my paternal grandfather, Faisal Sandouka, who passed away in 2012,” Tala said. “I missed his presence in the front yard of our home, when the small straw seats he used to sit on, or repair from time to time, became empty.”

When her carpenter grandfather repaired those stools, Tala always sat beside him. He recounted stories of his involvement with revolutionaries from the Arab Nationalist Movement, and how, during his trips to Damascus and Beirut to obtain wood and other raw materials for his trade, he would smuggle weapons and activists.

“One of the stories I presented with my artwork was an audio recording of my grandfather sharing how he and a group of companions smuggled one of the founders of the Arab Nationalist Movement, George Habash, out of Sheikh Hassan prison in Damascus,” she said.

Tala’s installation for the exhibition, which she titled Untold Stories, included a video of her wearing her grandfather’s clothing while weaving a straw seat, along with a straw sculpture that merges a chair and a travel bag, but functions as neither.

With these words, the Jerusalemite artist described her work, which she intentionally left unfinished: “The chair-making craft he learned as a boy and the adventures he lived in his youth became intertwined in his later years.” “Together, they formed stories of a stolen homeland, efforts to reclaim it, and the preservation of what remains within its heritage,” Tala added.

“The travel bag he kept with him held memories he told and others he concealed, and the dreams of a young man inside an aging man,” she shared.

“All of this lives on in memory, striving to preserve these stories, like the chair he left behind, around which the grandchildren would gather to listen to his tales.”

After completing her installation, Tala realized that straw art was what she had been searching for. It was the medium through which she could say what she wanted to express and convey.

She then began searching for raw materials. She is currently using treated wheat straw imported from China as the Israeli occupation has devastated local agricultural production, forcing Palestinian traders to import straw from abroad.

“I decided I did not want my art pieces to be merely straw chairs placed in a garden or a café; I wanted to move beyond a narrow frame to a broader one,” she told Jerusalem Story. “I began incorporating straw into many different works and envisioned them in other settings, such as a luxurious piece placed in a hotel.”

She introduced wood and copper into her artworks and is keen to keep her materials natural. She also incorporated resin as a supportive medium.

Inside her studio sit antique cabinets of various sizes, old wooden chairs, and a basket with branches that Tala gathered from the almond tree in the family orchard, which died after her grandfather’s passing. She is keen to use this wood in her works.

Through her art, she focuses on the psychological experiences people live through, how they are inherited and shape the course of life, as well as the human experience of time and place within one’s homeland, Tala revealed.

She also focuses on the psychological experiences that people carry, exploring how they are passed down and how they shape the course of life. She further addresses the individual’s relationship to time and place inside their homeland.

When asked how war impacts artists and their productivity, Tala explained that it can drive creation, since artists continually witness the direct effects of occupation on themselves and others and grapple with their psychological consequences.

“The artist, by nature, constantly reflects and revisits their inner world, which translates into long hours spent making art,” Tala said. “Through it, I try to express myself and the people around me, convey our feelings and lived experiences, on the one hand, and on the other, pass on our identity and rich history, showing the extent of our abilities and possibilities to build a meaningful future.”

“I also find solace in art, which I consider a form of psychological therapy,” she added.

Tala’s page on Instagram features photos of her art pieces.