At the Mill: Histories, Memories, and Futures of Jaffa
The exhibition At the Mill transforms the old wheat mill on Salameh Road - built over a
century ago - into a multidimensional art space that connects the past with the present
through contemporary visual and performance practices. Once a symbol of progress and of
Jaffa’s expansion beyond its old walls, the mill now stands as a site of layered meanings. Its
structure, marked by the passage of time, reflects the city’s cycles of prosperity, hardship,
and regeneration.
The exhibition invites artists from Jaffa and beyond to engage directly with the mill’s
architecture and layered histories. Through installations, painting, photography, video, and
live performance, the participating artists reimagine the mill as a vessel of memory - one that
both bears witness to forgotten narratives and opens up speculative futures.
The curatorial approach situates the mill not merely as a backdrop but as an active
participant in the dialogue between the works. Artists were invited to engage directly with
its architecture, its textures, and its silences, allowing the site itself to guide the process of
artistic production. The resulting works oscillate between documentation and imagination,
reflecting on the entanglement of spatial memory, personal histories, and collective identity.
By foregrounding the relationships between art, place, and historical consciousness, At the
Mill examines how architecture can operate as both a witness and an agent of
transformation. The exhibition questions the ways in which narratives are constructed and
archived, and how contemporary art can intervene in these processes to challenge fixed
interpretations of history. In doing so, it repositions the mill as a locus for critical reflection
on the politics of memory and belonging in Jaffa today.
Ultimately, the exhibition reclaims the site as a living archive - a space where histories
remain in motion rather than sealed in the past. At the Mill underscores that Jaffa’s story is
not singular nor complete, but continuously rewritten through acts of memory, artistic
engagement, and collective imagination. The mill becomes a site of encounter: between past
and future, material and metaphor, hardship and renewal.
Rula Khoury
Curator
Documenting the works and opening
Closing date: 24.1.2026
Opening date: 24.10.2025
Participating Artists
Professor Asad Azi was born in 1955 in Shefa-Amr, attending school in Shefa-Amr & Kiryat Ata. Following his graduation he pursued higher education in Haifa, where he majored in the Fine Arts, finding sculpting & painting to be his newfound passions. Azi’s interest in sculpting led him to live in Carrara, Italy & study sculpting marble. His education in the fine arts spans attending many varied institutes in his lifetime, from Beit Berl to the University of Haifa.
His passion for the arts is shown not only through the professor’s continuous creations in various mediums, but in his academic & published works as well; having written essays & non-fiction books on contemporary Palestinian art, as well as three Arabic poetry books, otherwise known as Dawaween. Azi currently resides in both Jaffa & Shefa-Amr as he continues to create, examine, deconstruct & reinvent his artistry.
Asad Azi
(Shefa-Amr, 1955)
Asad Azi’s entries aim to reflect & subvert the realities of the “educated Arab in our modern society.” Maps & city planning documents are used as a template, a canvas, for Azi to dash his understanding of the world onto. Aerial views of cities are drowned in paint, paper clippings, elaborate yet miniscule paintings-within-paintings and emerge as something new, as told by the way the artist views the world in which he exists. The contemporary expressions of art clash with Azi’s wood panel sculptures; reminiscent of antiquated architecture, it stands next to wild and somehow intricate collages & paintings.
Inas Osrof Abu Seif is a Palestinian multidisciplinary artist working in photography, painting, and performance. Born and raised in Yafa, she is a mother of two sons. Through her art, she explores her identity. She studies art history at the university and is also a social activist. She is the founder of fruitsbasketprinthouse, a linoleum printing studio based in Yafa.
In her work, the artist explores the connections between place, memory, and landscape, using printmaking, photography, and local materials from the environment of Yafa. Her works combine personal testimony with a critical perspective on social reality, as she continues to search for new ways to tell the story of place through layers of material, image, and memory.
Inas Osrof Abu Seif
(Yafa, 1994)
The artist has a deep and enduring connection with the sea — from her birth to the birth of her children, they are inseparable. For a certain period, the artist worked on cleaning fish skeletons, confronting her profound fear of fish, choosing to challenge herself and to reveal what had previously been hidden from her eyes. For the artist, Yafa is an unresolved enigma, and the history of her birthplace has been concealed from her. The place to which she is emotionally tied holds a painful history, and it is often difficult for her to see how beautiful her city is — and how painful. Yafa is photographed and presented as an iconic tourist site, but as a daughter of the city, the artist feels discontent with the way its beauty is exploited, without awareness or sensitivity towards the history of the place. In her work, the artist attempts to merge two familiar landscapes — both to the tourist’s eye and the local one — a structure of lifeguard’s wood board, and a missing lifeguard who has not yet returned, alongside panels containing fish skeletons.
Raafat Hattab was born in Jaffa in 1981. He studied at the French school Collège des Frères de Jaffa, and later attended the Municipal School Eronei Zain in Jaffa, where he completed his high school studies. In 2005, he earned his Bachelor’s degree (B.Ed.F.A) from the Faculty of Arts – Hamidrasha at Beit Berl College, and in 2015, completed his Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.
Hattab was one of the founding members of the cooperative gallery Alfred in Tel Aviv in 2005, where he remained active until 2012. Since then, he has been working as an independent artist. His multidisciplinary practice explores themes of identity, belonging, and memory, combining performance, video, and conceptual art in a poetic investigation of Palestinian presence within public space.
Raafat Hattab
(Yafa, 1981)
In his work Houria, Raafat Hattab explores the act of tattooing as a symbolic pact between body and place. On his chest, the phrase “Yaffa, the Bride of Palestine” is inscribed in Arabic calligraphy — an attempt to seal a covenant of love and loyalty between the city and its son. Through this act, Hattab challenges conventional notions of identity formation in Palestinian society, as tattooing is forbidden in Islam, transforming it here into an act of both resistance and belonging.
In the video, Hattab interviews his aunt Yusra, who recounts the family’s history of displacement from the agricultural village of Jamaseen Al-Gharbi in 1948 to Jaffa, tracing through memory the transformations of place and the Palestinian diaspora.
The personal and the national intertwine in his aunt’s testimony, where the feminine voice emerges as the keeper of memory: after the death of the grandfather, the village storyteller, the illiterate grandmother became the bearer of narrative, passing her voice to her daughter and grandson.
In Houria, The Mermaid of Al-Manshiyeh’s Shores embodies both belonging to the Palestinian nation and a continuous movement that transcends rigid definitions of identity.
May Grabli was born and raised in Yafa and currently living in Spain. Growing up in a mixed city is an experience which can feel like both a blessing and a curse. She claims, you learn to blend in without trying, yet the cost is giving up pieces of yourself, your language and your identity. Like many others, May wasn’t taught about her ancestors or their experiences during the Nakba because most stories were too painful to share and elders rarely wanted to relive their memories. Learning about her Palestinian heritage and lost traditions as an adult meant chasing questions and gathering fragments to fill the years of not knowing.
May Garabli
(Yafa, 1997)
Food is deeply tied to identity. It tells stories about the people who eat it, the land it comes from, and the traditions that shape it. Grabli began working on “Palestinian Breakfast”, while her focus was entirely on the dishes themselves. She painted each one as a form of cultural documentation, not knowing yet that this would be the first time she introduced her signature little Palestinians.
While most of the dishes shown are simple, everyday foods, a significant amount of food we eat require hours of preparation and collaboration. Preparing food together is not only work, it is also about storytelling and connection across generations. Food does not reach our table without patience and the effort of many hands. Through her work, the artist presents food as more than mere sustenance—it is memory, land, and labor. It is family, community, and history. It is who we are.
In her work ”Resistance is Exhausting” Garabli explores the experience of being observed and living in a strange ‘in-between’ reality. This reality can give a sense of privilege and may appear beautiful on the surface, yet it is complex and twisted the deeper you look.
Mario Morcos studied drawing, painting, and the principles of art at the studio of the painter Marek Yanai in Jerusalem, whilst also holding a diploma in Architecture from Shenkar School of Practical Engineering (2012, Tel Aviv). His work is based on observational painting. Some pieces reflect his perception of reality, while others are born of Morcos’s imagination, created through different media such as drawing, oil paint, and watercolor. The architecture and history of Jaffa are also a dominant source of inspiration for the artist.
Mario Morcos
(Yafa, 1991)
The works presented in Morcos’s entries focus on the architecture of Jaffa, the buildings, the structures themselves. Like an archaeologist digging in history, Morcos attempts to connect with the timeless layer— The “magical” layer of Yafa— that is revealed in the stories of history and mythology, in the local culture, and in the old alleys which are slowly disappearing in the modern era. By wandering through the streets of the city, on foot or by bicycle, He observes the remains of the houses that still stand, trying to imagine the views that once unfolded from their windows, to glimpse moments from days he’d have never known.
Sami Bukhari is a multimedia artist born in Yafa, where he currently lives and works. He is a graduate of the College of Fine Arts in Marseille, France (1992), and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2016). His practice focuses primarily on black-and-white photography and contemporary sculpture.
In 1994, after nearly a decade in France, he returned and worked as a set painter for television commercials. Since 1997, he has been active in the public education system as an art educator. In his early artistic journey, Bukhari explored works that balanced on the edge of simplicity and banality, seeking ways to transform everyday objects and materials into artistic forms with minimal intervention. Over time, and in response to the ongoing political and social tensions in the region, the humor that once defined his work evolved into a more critical, activist-oriented practice, focusing on Palestinian identity and the charged realities surrounding it.
Sami Bukhari
(Yafa,1964)
As the exhibition at Al-Mathana approached, Bukhari was drawn to the tension between the building’s past as a source of nourishment and its later transformation into a military watchtower. This contrast recalled an earlier object he created from the edge of a baguette, which he sculpted into the head of a shark. Bread that in his eyes, symbolizes both life and violence.
Later, inspired by a 2024 portrait he painted of a “dust-covered man in white,” Bukhari used AI tools to generate figures of “dusty” laborers, joyfully immersed in their toil. These images led him to a visual language evoking survivors emerging from ruins, their bodies coated in gray dust; from there, he arrived at figures carrying sacks of flour, moving through a liminal space between life and death.
Within this framework, Persephone—the Greek goddess of earth’s fertility and the seasons—became, in Bukhari’s eyes, a figure closer to the Angel of Death, choosing the underworld over the realm of the living. He saw in her an allegory for societies that prefer to impose a cult of death rather than sanctify life.
Main Curator: Rula Khoury | Assistant Curators: Ahmad Haliwa and Massa Omar | Performance "From Clay": Warda Khater, Rania Makhlouf, Nour Minawi, Ghadia Nasser, Fatima Muhaysen | Sound Production for the Performance: Abd Daadla | Production Management: Hanan Naffar and Massa Omar | Graphic Design: Hazar Yousef | Technical: Marwan Satal | Director: Mahmoud Abu Arisha