Nazeh Exhibition - Berlin Iteration

The Gaza map displayed in the Berlin iteration of Nazeh is a large-scale cartographic installation originally created in Cairo in 2024 through workshops and direct participation of Palestinians newly displaced from Gaza after October 7. In its first form, the map was engraved on MDF panels and functioned as a tactile testimony of lived routes of flight, loss, and rupture.
For the Berlin edition, the map has been reproduced and re-fabricated using high-quality CNC-engraved Valchromat wooden panels (Dark Grey Colour), enhancing material longevity, precision, and archival durability. The new fabrication continues to carry the Cairo inscriptions—routes, memory fragments, and narrative traces contributed by displaced participants—now embedded in a refined and durable cartographic surface.
The full installation measures 8 meters in length and 2.4 meters in width, forming a central ground that visitors physically enter, walk upon, and engage with as a shared memory-space.
In Berlin, the map expands into a dual-memory device: it retains the Cairo layer documenting recent displacement while inviting contributions from the Palestinian diaspora in Germany to map memories of Gaza before its current devastation. Threads, small models, notes, and symbolic objects are added throughout the exhibition, creating spatial dialogue between immediate trauma and long-distance remembrance.
Rather than a navigational tool, the map operates as a living cartography of absence, return, and collective witnessing, transforming personal memory into shared spatial practice.