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
Participating Artists
Ahmed Asaad is an architect and multidisciplinary artist working across spatial practices, installation, and material experimentation. His work explores the tension between external systems and internal states, often addressing themes of organization, surveillance, cleanliness, and containment as embodied lived conditions rather than abstract concepts. Through the use of architecture, sound, light, and constructed environments, Asaad creates disciplined installations that prioritize sensation over narrative and experience over explanation. His practice is grounded in precision, control, and contrast, employing a quiet institutional aesthetic to reveal unresolved emotional and psychological states. Through this approach, his work invites quiet perception rather than spectacle, situating personal experience within a shared contemporary condition.
Under Maintenance
This installation explores the tension between external order and internal unrest, between what is enacted publicly and what remains unresolved within. The work does not address religion as a direct subject; rather, it engages with the experience of surveillance and the ways in which moral and social frameworks shape the body, desire, and everyday behavior.
The work presents itself as a calm architectural structure with pastel tones, clean lines, and controlled lighting, evoking familiarity, order, and institutional neutrality. It appears as a space in which bodies are expected to behave “appropriately,” where feelings of safety and compliance are produced through regulation and calmness.
Yet this serenity is merely the surface of things. Through narrow openings, the viewer is invited to come closer without fully entering. Inside, a dense and unstable environment unfolds, composed of dim lighting, warmth, and low-frequency sound. The interior offers no clear symbols or narratives, but rather a bodily experience that is felt more than understood.
The work reflects a division between external purity and internal disturbance; while acts of organization and cleaning may reinforce outward control, they do not resolve the inner condition they attempt to contain. The work does not seek confession, purification, or critique, but instead creates a space for shared acknowledgment—a space that sustains tension between the visible and the sensed, between order and fragility, as both a personal and collective condition.
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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.
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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.
.jpeg)
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.
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.
.jpeg)
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.
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.
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.
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.
.jpg)
.jpg)
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.
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.
.png)
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.
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.
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.
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.
.jpeg)
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.
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.
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قيمة المعرض: رلى خوري | قيّمان مساعدان: أحمد حليوى وماسة عمر | تصميم غرافيكي: هيا قعوار | تصميم المعرض: أحمد أسعد
إدارة تقنيّة: مروان سطل | المدير: محمود أبو عريشة | مساندة إنتاجية: آلاء غسان | شكر خاص على المبادرة والتعاون: نزار حليوى