when home won't let you stay

Interactive Experience, Cornell Box

When home won’t let you stay is an interactive experience exploring memories using audio and visual expressions, centered around the palestinian experience, mainly a childhood in diaspora.
I used visual elements that draw parallels between my two “childhoods”. The first one being this big, fancy space that represents growing up in the UAE. I used that as the main aesthetic of the “box” to represent the seemingly “normal” childhood of someone in the UAE. As the user continues to explore, some of the visual elements include a palestinian embroidered rug, a picture of my sister and I in a Palestinian protest, another one of us wearing traditional palestinian clothing - indicating and drawing these parallels that Palestine always lives with us.
The audio used includes some ocean waves (I grew up very close to a beach), an interview with Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani, remembered for his extensive literary work that continues to inspire many Arabic writers and literary enthusiasts worldwide. Additionally, there's a song that my parents, like many Arab parents, used to sing to us to help us sleep. The song clip in the experience translates to:

A bird stood at my window. And said "Oh, little one.
Hide me with you, I beg you."
I said, "Where are you from?", "From the limits of the sky," he said.
I said "Where did you come from?", "From the neighbor's house" he answered.
I said, "What are you afraid of?", "I escaped from the cage", he said
I said "What are your feathers?", "Fate took care of them," he said.
A bird stood at my window. And said "Oh, little one.
Hide me with you, I beg you.

The final audio clip features news reporting on the murder of the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh. She passed away in 2022 but had reported on Palestine throughout my entire life, and I heavily learned about Palestine through her reporting.
s I hope this experience offers a window into the Palestinian struggle for liberation and how that looked like to me, what it’s like growing up and fighting for liberation through windows 1K miles away.