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Dima Srouji
FOUR MOONS FROM HOME
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“Through making glass objects and researching the history of the land, Dima Srouji assembles new possibilities within the past towards the future.”— Osman Can Yerebakan, Canvas Magazine
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Mosaic Rooms Commission
Four Moons From HomeSrouji’s recent commission for The Mosaic Rooms extends her long-standing engagement with archaeology and contested heritage. Developed through research into displaced artefacts and museum collections, the project reflects on the afterlives of objects removed from their original contexts.
Four Moons From Home is a permanent, site-specific commission by Dima Srouji that brings together architecture, craft, and material memory within the institution’s entrance space. The work comprises a series of large-scale stained-glass windows carved in Jerusalem stone by artisans in Bethlehem. Transported from Palestine to London, these materials carry embedded histories of place and labour, extending the architectural threshold into a continuum that connects geographies and lived experience. Drawing on longstanding stained-glass traditions, Srouji positions light as both medium and archive—activating the surface of the work while revealing its layered materiality.
Referencing qamariya (half-moon) windows found across Yemen, Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, the installation foregrounds the enduring knowledge of regional stone carving and glassmaking practices. Coloured glass derived from Palestinian flora traces the cyclical passage of the seasons, embedding a temporal dimension within the work’s formal structure.
Through its shifting interplay of light and shadow, Four Moons From Home transforms the act of entry into a space of reflection—where questions of heritage, displacement, and visibility are held in suspension, and where the possibility of collective repair quietly emerges.
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Portrait of Dima Srouji. Courtesy of Gucci. -
DIMA SROUJI
(b. 1990, Palestine)Dima Srouji is an architect, artist and researcher interested in the ground, objects, displacement, restitution, forgeries and living archives. Her work explores the ground as a deep space of cultural and historical weight, looking for ruptures where imaginary forms of liberation become possible. Working across glass, text, archival materials, maps, plaster casts and film, she treats materials as emotional and evocative objects that help question what cultural heritage and public space mean in the larger context of the Middle East, with a particular focus on Palestine. She graduated from the Yale School of Architecture.
Her practice exists within the expanded field of interdisciplinary research and is often developed in collaboration with archaeologists, anthropologists, sound designers and glassblowers. Through installations, architectural projects, product design and writing, she examines identity, globalisation and displacement through historic layers, spatial edges and the spirit of place, using making as both a political commentary and a place-making or unmaking tool.
Srouji is a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture and currently leads the MA City Design studios at the Royal College of Art, London. Her work has been exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial, Islamic Arts Biennial, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Corning Museum of Glass, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Palestinian Museum, and is held in collections including the Corning Museum of Glass, Stedelijk Museum and Art Jameel Collection in Jeddah. Srouji was the 2022-2023 Jameel Fellow at the Victoria & Albert Museum and is currently leading the MA City Design studios at the Royal College of Art in London.
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“I work with materials as emotional companions—glass, archives, fragments—to question what cultural heritage means, and to search for moments where rupture becomes a site of repair and imagined liberation.”
— DIMA SROUJI, ARTIST STATEMENT
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'Charts for a Resurrection': Dima Srouji's Solo Exhibition at Lawrie Shabibi
Installation view of Dima Srouji, 'Charts for a Resurrection', at Lawrie Shabibi.In May 2024, Dima Srouji presented her first solo exhibition at Lawrie Shabibi, titled Charts for a Resurrection, on view from 7 May to 20 July 2024.
Srouji’s work operated within an expanded field of interdisciplinary research, functioning both as political commentary and as a tool for place-making and un-making. She collaborated closely with archaeologists, anthropologists, glassblowers, and sound designers to develop architectural projects, installations, product designs, and writing. Working across media including glass, text, archival materials, maps, and film, Srouji interrogated ideas of identity and globalisation through historical strata and spatial narratives, engaging with the spirit of place and displacement. Her practice explored themes of land, objects, restitution, forgeries, and living archives, seeking moments of rupture where imagined forms of liberation might emerge.
The exhibition was conceived as two distinct spatial environments: a larger terrain and a more intimate chapel-like setting. Together, they brought installations and archival prints into dialogue, intertwining historical artefacts with imagined archaeological sites.
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Installation view of Dima Srouji, Grave Goods, 2024, on view at Charts for a Resurrection, at Lawrie Shabibi.
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“Through her work, which is made across a varied range of media, including text, archival materials, glass, maps and film, Srouji explores identity, displacement, globalization, the spirit of places, and people left behind often with little documentation. Through her art she gives new voice and meaning to the fractured, the displaced and what is seemingly forgotten.”
— Rebecca Anne Proctor, Arab News -
Dima Srouji in Conversation with Myrna Ayad
