Basel Zaraa: Good Chance Commissioned Artist on ‘Dear Laila’
Good Chance Commissioned Artist Basel Zaraa tells us about Dear Laila, an installation that investigates the idea of ‘Home’ and what it means to him.
This post was originally shared on 30 March 2022 but has since been re-shared with updates about Dear Laila’s continued tour around the world.
About Basel
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 project, Dear Laila, 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.
About Dear Laila
Winner of ZKB Prize Audience Award 2023
Dear Laila, you are five now and have started to ask me where I grew up, and why we can’t go there. This is me trying to give you an answer.
The seeds of Dear Laila were planted when Basel’s five-year-old daughter began to ask him about his home growing up. Unable to take her there, he decided he would try to bring the place to her, by creating a model of his childhood home in Yarmouk 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 are experienced through the everyday, the domestic, and the public space. An intimate, interactive installation experienced by one audience member at a time, Dear Laila uses the retelling of memories and tactile details to bring this now destroyed place to life.
An Update!
Since its premiere at the Museum of the Home in April 2022, Dear Laila has been shown in Cairo, Brussels, Bern, Marseilles, Basel, Santarcangalo, Zurich, Tunis, Bristol, Santiago, Vancouver, Hamburg, Gent, Rotterdam, Lilles, Freiburg, Baden, Cagliari, Ljubljana, Kuopio, Madrid, Terrassa, Milan, Modena, Foligno, Lisbon, Montreal and Portland - captivating audiences around the world. The tour continues in 2025 with upcoming shows in Paris at Points Communs (21-29 March) and Theatre-Senart (1-10 April), Barcelona at Theatre National de Catalonia (12-13 April), at the Catanzaro Performing Festival (9 May), Berlin at Sophiensaele (15-18 May), at the Utrecht SPRING Performing Arts Festival (22-31 May 2025) and Milan at ZONA K (4-6 June)
Can you tell us a bit about Dear Laila, the installation you’ve created for the Museum of the Home, and why you wanted to make it?
Dear Laila is inspired by my young daughter, Laila, asking me where I grew up. I couldn’t take her there, so the installation is me trying to bring the place to her. It’s a recreation of my destroyed family home in Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Syria - a story told through a miniature model, audio narration and different objects which the audience can find and touch.
‘Where did you grow up?’ is meant to be a simple question, but for us the answer involves a long story beginning with our exile from Palestine in 1948. Growing up as refugees in Syria, we were determined to return to Palestine, but in some ways Yarmouk camp also became our home. But then we lost this new home, too.
As the Museum's work is all about different ideas of home - when you hear the word home, what is the first image that comes to mind?
When I hear the word ‘home’ today, I think about family and community. Growing up as a refugee, ‘home’ always meant the country I wanted to return to. We felt that we were not living in our home, but in a temporary place, the camp. But after we lost this ‘temporary place’ too, and our community was scattered across Syria and the world, we realised that home has two meanings. Home is our land that we are struggling to return to, and home is also people. So I believe that wherever I go, I can make home through the people I meet.
What do you hope your audience will take away from Dear Laila?
Dear Laila is the story of a normal family living in extraordinary circumstances. I want the story to help people see how war and occupation are experienced by ordinary people, and how historical events like the Nakba (the exile of the Palestinians) go on affecting their everyday lives for generations.
If you could tell your past self anything about creating your home in the UK, what would it be?
On a personal level, I feel lucky that I have a home in the UK. I have created memories over the past 10 years and have made a family and community here. I have space to breathe and am able to travel. At the same time, we cannot forget that while powerful countries like the UK may feel like safe places to live, their actions have robbed people of their homes in other parts of the world.
I believe that home should be available to everyone, regardless of where they live or the colour of their passport.
Basel’s installation will be exhibited in ‘Home, Migration, Belonging’ at the Museum of the Home from 12 April to 2 May 2022, alongside other commissioned artists Hamed Moradi and Andrea Ling. All three installations are free and open to everyone!
