Traces of Presence: Palestinian Female Artists Show Off Their Art

A female-led exhibition taking place in Jerusalem, Traces of Presence, explores memory as a dynamic space that does not stop at the past but actively shapes the present. A trace, no matter how fleeting it may seem, carries a profound power to reopen time: to connect what once was with what is, and to evoke what has never fully left us, but remains embedded in us through places, sounds, and scents that inhabit the remnants of presence.

These words were printed in black on a white background installed at the entrance of Palestinian Art Court—al-Hoash on Jerusalem’s al-Zahra Street. The words offer visitors an introductory glimpse into the art exhibition Traces of Presence, which brings together works by eight Palestinian female artists from East Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied territories. The art pieces will be on display in the gallery halls for one month.

The Jerusalem Story Team attended the opening of the exhibition, which was organized by the Jerusalem-based Palestinian art collective Eitar and hosted by al-Hoash. The team walked through the exhibition rooms, notable for their lighting and the substance of the artworks on display.

The young Jerusalemite artist Sujood Abu Rmeileh created a particularly striking work titled Has the Color of Carnation Faded? The piece was inspired by an image she came across while scrolling through social media posts. The artwork shows people selling flowers in Gaza while surrounded by rubble.

In her conversation with Jerusalem Story, Sujood explained that the image first caught her attention for its aesthetic, prompting her to research further. She discovered that Gaza had once been one of the main exporters of flowers in Palestine. She also found that everything related to flower cultivation had disappeared because of the war. She then paused and asked herself: “What is the value of losing flowers compared to the human loss over the past two years?”1

From this point, the work took on a different perspective. Sujood began posing what she described as philosophical questions: What do flowers feel when their grower is gone, and the water tap is left open? Do the petals wilt and the leaves dry? Do the stems shrink and the roots rot? Or do the flowers begin a journey searching for the one who tended to them, watering their own trunks as they weep over the absence, taking it upon themselves to embrace that person, whether alive or dead? And then, What became of the color of the carnation and the rose?

Sujood chose to paint five five meters of transparent nylon meant for wrapping flowers. She reflected on the experience, saying: “The material I was painting on was extremely delicate, as were my emotions, which I tried to convey to the carnation flowers I painted and to their roots.” She added, “Through my research, I found that carnations are the favorite flower for Palestinians in Gaza to grow, because they adapt to all conditions. I saw them as resembling the people of Gaza, who can adapt to any circumstances.”

The artwork is devoid of the human figure, which Sujood considers absent. The roots attempt to fill the void, or search for the human, or perhaps they too have died. “The work does not provide answers; it raises questions.”

“After digging through archival materials about flower cultivation in Gaza—from Beit Lahiya in the north to Rafah in the south—I tried to understand what loss means for plants,” Sujood revealed.

The Jerusalem Story Team moved on from this transparent artwork, which is suspended from the ceiling to the floor and reflected on one of the gallery walls, toward Haya Qa‘war’s artwork I Passed through the Town. The piece brings into focus handwritten and hand-painted shop signs in Jerusalem’s Old City, reading them as everyday visual traces that continue to inhabit the place.

The work of this artist, who hails from the city of Haifa, combines visual documentation with oral narration. It reveals the impact of successive generations through small details that often go unnoticed by passersby.

“Only a small number of handmade signs still remain in the Old City, and they drew my attention as I walked through its streets,”2 Haya explained. “I wanted to tell the stories of the shops and their signs, and to gather them into a small booklet that becomes a window onto the Old City—onto intimate, collective relationships that are at risk of disappearing due to speed, consumerism, and ongoing attempts at erasure.”

Haya added that she considers her work an invitation for visitors to the Old City to pause and pay attention and to rebuild a closer relationship with the place and its people.

Another Jerusalemite artist, Nawal Amer, titled her work The Transparency of White. Visitors were struck by the sight of a white wedding dress installed in one corner of the exhibition space. Even more striking was the fact that the dress was adorned with glass—Nawal’s field of specialization at university, where she studied glass and ceramic design.

Speaking about her work, she explained that wedding dresses in Palestinian weddings are not presented as purely celebratory objects but rather as vessels of a collective memory burdened with loss and absence. From this perspective, she said, “I drew inspiration from the designs of wedding dresses worn by women in my family between 1940 and 1967, transforming them into a temporal installation in which multiple narratives intersect.”3

Regarding the incorporation of glass into the wedding dress, Nawal shared that at first glance the dress appears whole and ready to be worn. Yet, upon closer inspection, an internal tension between completeness and fracture is revealed, as small glass fragments appear across its surface, not for decoration but as a conceptual structure that mirrors Palestinian memory itself.

According to Nawal, glass is both solid and fragile, which is prone to cracking. Its fragile solidity reflects a continual attempt to reassemble what has been broken.

Nawal explained that the undulations in the glass embedded in the wedding dress were deliberate rather than decorative, each one standing for a bride and her own story. Many brides, she noted, were prevented from fully inhabiting their moment of joy due to war, displacement, or loss.

Work on the glass-inlaid wedding dress took four months to complete, and this Jerusalemite artist is keen to ensure that glass is present in her work as an art form, not merely as a material.

Next to the wedding dress, fashion designer Dana Idris presented her art piece, What Remains. Dana deconstructed fabric and reassembled it into contemplative, commemorative pieces using clothing that belonged to her mother, who passed away after a battle with cancer.

The idea behind the work was deeply personal, through which she sought to convey her emotions one year after her mother’s passing, Dana shared. She added that the piece engages with the idea of clothing once it is separated from the body that wore it, and that she was careful to display the pieces in a deconstructive manner that speaks to her attempt to weave her feelings into them.

This artwork left the artist with a lingering question: “If I am able to mourn my mother in a work dedicated to her alone, how can we mourn the immense number of martyrs we have lost?”4

Hiba Sbeih is another Jerusalemite artist who displayed her work at the exhibition: an installation that envisions Palestinian memory as a digital world built from small units of data. These units are governed by shifting algorithms that control the flow of information; they reorder it, obscure it, or gradually distort it. With the angle of view or intensity, the scene shifts, causing any attempt at a fixed or stable reading to collapse.

According to Hiba, “the viewer finds themselves facing a disorienting visual experience, akin to trying to grasp a history that is quietly reshaped over time—an unstable memory, and an identity that is simultaneously forming and unraveling. Rather than documenting memory, the work reflects its mutable, incomplete state.”5

After touring the exhibition, Jerusalem Story spoke with Alaa Badran, one of the founders of Eitar, who explained that the exhibition emerged from an artists’ residency program—the third of its kind—designed for recent graduates and art students.

During the residency, participating artists attend workshops and lectures, after which they work toward mounting a collective exhibition around a theme.

In this year’s edition, that theme centers around the idea of “what remains of something.”

Alaa emphasized the importance of institutions that provide space and support for emerging artists, noting that cooperation with the Palestinian Art Court—al-Hoash began a year ago.

Rwan Sharaf, chair of the board of directors of al-Hoash, revealed that the exhibition is the result of a relationship formed with Eitar four years ago when the collective was established to create a shared space for artists to work and meet one another. Hosting Eitar at al-Hoash, she explained, is both a form of partnership and service.

Reflecting on the added value of such an exhibition for al-Hoash, Rwan affirmed that every artistic event, however large or small, constitutes an important contribution to Jerusalem. She emphasized that these cultural acts play a vital role in preserving the city, its culture, and its existence as a Palestinian city during a time when it is facing the most aggressive attempts at erasure.

She added that it is important for youth collectives to find ways to work and activate their cultural awareness and critical thinking, noting that “this in itself is an addition for us, and for both the individual and collective dimensions of Palestinian identity, and for understanding our presence within this context.”6