Kabsh Qrunfol, Wearing Cloves
Multimedia installation, 2026
Kabsh Qrunfol, Wearing Cloves draws from a Palestinian bridal tradition in which women gather before a wedding to make a necklace of cloves for the bride. The work looks deeply at the necklace itself, but also rooting it in the communal space created through its making: shared labour, singing, storytelling, and the transmission of knowledge between generations of women.
Bringing together ceramic necklace sculptures, paintings, and film, the project explores ritual as a living structure of care rather than a fixed cultural inheritance. The suspended ceramic sculpture reimagines the bridal necklace at a monumental scale, while the film follows women in Palestine as they prepare it collectively. Newly commissioned mhaha (المهاهاة); traditional Palestinian women's ceremonial chants that move between lament and celebration, extend the ritual into the present, allowing the work to inhabit the tradition rather than simply document it.
Set against the realities of ongoing political violence and displacement, Kabsh Qrunfol, Wearing Cloves considers how communal rituals sustain relationships, carry memory, and generate hope. The work proposes that traditions endure not because they remain unchanged, but because they continue to be practiced, reimagined, and shared collectively.
