we refuse_d

Suha Shoman is a Palestinian-Jordanian artist, cultural activist, and a pivotal figure in contemporary Arab art of the Arabic world. Her multifaceted practice spans visual art, film, and institution-building, rooted in a deep commitment to supporting contemporary Arab artists and fostering critical cultural dialogue across the region. Born in Jerusalem just four years before the Nakba, her life and practice are profoundly shaped by displacement. Her works are often meditative and politically charged, exploring the interwoven themes of land, time, and memory. From her early abstract paintings inspired by the timeless landscapes of Petra to her later video works addressing exile and loss with unmediated directness, this duality between abstraction and activism, memory and testimony, defines Shoman’s legacy.

Her video Bayyaratina (Our Orange Grove) recounts the story of her grandfather’s orange groves in Beit Hanoun, Northern Gaza, which he started planting in 1929. Merging personal testimony, archival imagery, and realities on the ground, the film traces the life of the orchard, tended across three generations, and its eventual total destruction by occupying military forces, beginning with the early years of the Second Intifada in 2003, then culminating in 2009. Through poetic narration and still images, past and present, Bayyaratina evokes both beauty and rupture rooted in soil and exile. Layered across time, the film conjures a landscape shaped by memory, displacement and loss.

we refuse_d is produced by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, on the occasion of their 15th anniversary, and presented in partnership with M HKA.
Curated by Nadia Radwan and Vasıf Kortun.

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  Bayyaratina, 2009

  Suha Shoman