Dear Laila, by Basel Zaraa - Thursday 19
Within the programming of
Ídem 2024. International Performing Arts Festival| Target audience: | General public |
| Price: | 0€ |
| Location: | (copia) Auditorio |
The installation Dear Laila is a miniature replica of a family home in which a Palestinian father tells his five-year-old daughter about the place where he grew up and why they can’t visit it. Using audio stories, photographs and artefacts, its creator Basel Zaraa shares his personal story of exile, displacement and resistance.
The seeds of Dear Laila were planted when Basel’s five-year-old daughter started asking him about his home growing up. Unable to take there, Basel decided to bring the place to her by creating a model of his childhood home in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus.
Dear Laila shares the Palestinian experience of displacement and resistance through the story of one family, exploring how war and exile invade the everyday, the domestic and the public space. An intimate, interactive installation experienced by one audience member at a time, it uses the retelling of memories and tactile details to bring this now destroyed place to life.
Winner of the 2023 ZBK Audience Award.
Basel Zaraa is a UK-based Palestinian artist whose work uses the senses to bring audiences closer to experiences of exile and the quest for identity. His current project, Dear Laila, is an interactive installation that recreates his destroyed family home in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. The work received the 2023 ZBK Audience Award. His previous works include As Far As My Fingertips Take Me, a collaboration with Tania El Khoury, which was awarded Outstanding Production at the Bessie Awards in 2019. He has shown his work at over 40 venues and festivals across five continents.
*Free admission, prior registration. Individual slots every 20 minutes. Please respect your chosen slot or you will not be admitted.
Show and artist information
Creation and direction: Basel Zaraa
Translation and editing: Emily Churchill Zaraa
Sound engineer: Peter Churchill
Commissioned by Good Chance Theatre, with support from Arts Council England
