Sophie Abu Shakra
This video work brings together elements from two earlier installations – “Window” (Israel Museum 2023) and “Pixel Threads” (Haifa Museum 2025) – to explore the layered and fragmented nature of memory. Central to the piece is a digitally reconstructed floor pattern, inspired by the tiles in the artist’s grandmother’s old home. Created entirely from memory through drawing, pattern, and color, the tiles serve as both a physical and emotional surface for recollection. The artist’s grandmother – an enduring source of inspiration – appears through imagined domestic gestures and childhood memories that have deepened in meaning over time. Using collage and visual layering, the work reconstructs forgotten spaces and moments, offering a poetic reflection on the ways memory shapes personal and collective identity.
“My work aligns closely with the vision of the createPeace initiative, as it offers a deeply personal yet universally resonant reflection on peace through memory, cultural continuity, and the reactivation of forgotten narratives. By weaving together fragments of family history, traditional craft, and digital technologies, I seek to create spaces that honor what is often overlooked – quiet gestures, intimate stories, and inherited knowledge. For me, peace is not an abstract ideal, but a tangible act of remembering, preserving, and reimagining identity – an ongoing effort to commemorate the work of forgotten women whose names we may never have known, yet whose presence lives on through the work itself.”
Sophie Abu Shakra is a Palestinian architect, designer, and visual artist. She holds a B.Arch in Architecture and an M.Sc in Industrial Design from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. In addition to her artistic practice, she works as a lecturer in architecture. Her work lies at the intersection of architecture, design, and identity, often centering women’s perspectives and overlooked archival narratives. Through a research-driven approach, she engages with themes of history, tradition, technology, craft, and womanhood. Moving between the digital and the handmade, her installations and visual explorations reflect on memory, place, and cultural continuity.
Sophie Abu Shakra on YouTube: Design in Arabic (The Israel Museum Jerusalem)
