Where There Is Much Light, The Shadow Is Deep 2022

Inspired by Goethe’s saying, this project explores attachment to images, expectations, and the gaze of others that leaves parts of ourselves in shadow. The salon serves as both a domestic space and a site of representation, where memory, identity, and social performance intersect. Through light, shadow, and material, I construct imagined salons inspired by personal memories rather than recreating them. These spaces become vessels for reflection, revealing how identity is shaped through both presence and absence. Drawing on my experience as a Palestinian woman, I use light to uncover what is visible, while shadow preserves what remains unresolved between memory and forgetting. Within this tension, the salon becomes a place where memory, place, and lived experience converge, allowing identity to emerge not as fixed, but as something continuously evolving.