About this event
What Will We Do Without Exile? is an immersive, multi-sensory installation that creates a lush world within a refugee tent, inviting audiences to imagine life beyond occupation. Inspired by the refusal of its people to stop imagining tomorrow, even in the face of genocide, the installation celebrates the natural and cultural richness of Palestine, past, present and future. As audience members sit among orange and olive trees, listen to a soundscape and read a newspaper from the future, they are transported to harvest season in a liberated land, where the seeds of freedom sown during long decades of struggle have borne fruit at last. What Will We Do Without Exile? honours the strength and sacrifice of colonised people, and imagines a world where they have not only won their liberation, but where their resilience, ingenuity and relationship with the land are recognised as examples for humanity in crisis. about Basel Zaraa is a UK-based Palestinian artist whose work uses the senses to bring audiences closer to experiences of exile and war, and who creates art in order to face, express and understand the trauma that his community lives with. His current installation, ‘What Will We Do Without Exile?’ is an immersive, multi-sensory installation that creates a lush world within a refugee tent, inviting audiences to imagine life beyond occupation and war. Since 2022 he has also been touring ‘Dear Laila’, an intimate, a one-person-at-a-time installation centred around the recreation of a destroyed family home, which received the ZKB Audience Award 2023. His previous work includes ‘As Far As My Fingertips Take Me’, a collaboration with Tania El Khoury, which was awarded Outstanding Production at the Bessie Awards in 2019. His work has been shown at over 50 venues and festivals across five continents. — By Basel Zaraa In collaboration with Emily Churchill Zaraa Sound artist Pete Churchill Newspaper illustrator and designer Charlotte Bailey Featuring the voice of Sahar Qawasmi Tour Assistant Ward Zaraa With thanks to all the interview participants What Will We Do Without Exile? is commissioned by Moomin 80 and co- produced with Counterpoints Arts and Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture. It premiered in Bradford, UK, in June 2025. images © Davide Ciriello + © Jillian Du&Owen Churchill
