DE

A Little Evening

There has been a sense of wrongness in recent months. October 7th has been life-changing. Nothing sits quite right in the heart. People whom you believed were friends, or at the very least decent acquaintances became unflinchingly open about how little your life as a Person of Colour actually mattered (or still matters) to them. We watched as Palestinians were demonised in order to justify the ongoing brutality. Many of us looked on helplessly as this new, almost dystopian, reality unfolded. 

But there is at least hope in perseverance. We can still use our voice, and survival is an act of resistance in it of itself. Preserving Palestinian culture and heritage for me is an act of protest against their erasure. Mahmoud Darwish's work has touched the lives of so many, and when I came across his poem A Little Evening I was inspired to adapt it. 

Over the past few months, I have grown interested in interactive art, particularly pop-up books. Collaborating with classmates on a five-minute film of a pop-up book story inspired me to continue working in this medium. While I included the English translation, I felt that it was important for viewers to hear the Arabic language, again another act of preservation. My Arabic is imperfect, but I felt it was important to show just how much the piece resonated with me.