What Will We Do Without Exile?

What Will We Do Without Exile? by Basel Zaraa is an immersive, multi-sensory installation that creates a lush world within a refugee tent, inviting audiences to imagine life beyond occupation.

It was one of our four public art commissions for Moomin 80 during Refugee Week. A related programme of engagement with children, The Big Blue Bradford House, was run by SBC.

What Will We Do Without Exile

By Basel Zaraa

In collaboration with: Emily Churchill Zaraa

Sound artist: Pete Churchill

Newspaper Illustrator and Designer: Charlotte Bailey

Featuring the voice of Sahar Qawasmi

With thanks to all the interview participants.

While generations of Palestinian bodies have been forced into tents, their imaginations have never stopped reaching for liberation. What Will We Do Without Exile? pays tribute to imagination as resistance, as it celebrates the natural and cultural richness of Palestine, past, present and future. Through sight, touch, sound and stories, audience members are transported to a reality where the land and its people are finally free.

What Will We Do Without Exile? honours the struggle and sacrifice of colonised people, and imagines a world where they have not only won their liberation, but where their resilience and ingenuity are recognised as invaluable examples for humanity in crisis.

Basel Zaraa is a UK-based Palestinian artist whose work uses the senses to bring audiences closer to experiences of exile and war, and who creates art in order to face, express and understand the trauma that his community lives with. His current installation, ‘What Will We Do Without Exile?’ is an immersive, multi-sensory installation that creates a lush world within a refugee tent, inviting audiences to imagine life beyond occupation and war.

Since 2022 he has also been touring ‘Dear Laila’, an intimate, a one-person-at-a-time installation centred around the recreation of a destroyed family home, which received the ZKB Audience Award 2023. His previous work includes ‘As Far As My Fingertips Take Me’, a collaboration with Tania El Khoury, which was awarded Outstanding Production at the Bessie Awards in 2019. His work has been shown at over 50 venues and festivals across five continents.

What Will We Do Without Exile? is co-commissioned and co-produced with Counterpoints Arts and Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture and made possible by Moomin Characters Ltd as part of the  celebration of the 80th anniversary of the first Moomins book.

Read a text by the artist from the opening of the installation on 31 May 2025

View a 360 degree tour created by Bradford 2025

“It’s very important to me at this time to be able to create and share this work. ‘What Will We Do Without Exile?’ is a tribute to the Palestinian imagination, which stretches beyond the apartheid wall, beyond the siege, beyond all the trauma and grief, in defiance and in resistance to the occupation.” Basel Zaraa, artist

“Just to say how needed, beautiful and impactful your work is. My family and I travelled to experience it in Bradford over Eid – my partner is part of the Palestinian Diaspora, and it particularly stood out for us. We both came away in tears, in a positive/ fitting way and have a copy of the newspaper at home too which we have shared photos of. My step-children, who are of Palestinian heritage but born in the UK were able to garner more tangible understanding of all that is Palestine, just from your work. Other people we shared the space with were also visibly moved by the work.” Tess Farley, visitor comment

“We were delighted to collaborate on Moomin 80 with Counterpoints Arts to commission Basel Zaraa, on his incredibly moving installation which gave a sense of the natural and cultural richness of Palestine to our audiences. Nearly 1,000 people engaged with the space, exploring and reflecting deeply on its themes. Bradford is a City of Sanctuary, a city of Peace and place of refuge for people from across the world, and this project demonstrated to people that wherever they are from, they are welcomed, included and safe at Bradford 2025.” Shanaz Gulzar, Creative Director of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture