Ar'a
Installation overview at
Movement Exposed Gallery Space, Utrecht, The Netherlands 2025
‘Ar’a’, from the Aramaic, a word from the language of my ancestors, means ground, soil, foundation.
Lately, I’ve found myself returning to it, even from afar, in different corners of the earth. I’ve been re-searching, re-visiting what soil means in my life, not only in a physical sense, but as a vessel of memory and quiet knowledge.
There’s something about the ground I was born on, or perhaps born into, that continues to speak to me. I notice how I respond to it instinctively, as though I’m not starting from scratch, but from somewhere deeply familiar. I’m beginning to understand that this knowing isn’t just mine—it lives in me through the women who came before. Their stories, their wisdom, their pain and resilience, all stored in the layers of my DNA like traces left in the earth.
This generational memory doesn’t always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it lingers in the background, dormant but present. Still, I feel I’m in a place now, both in time and in myself, where I can start to bring it to the surface. To heal what was left unattended, to give shape to what was once unspoken.
In this process, I’m remembering. And in that remembering, I’m also transforming—myself, and perhaps, something larger.
