Wandering through the halls of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Dima Srouji, a Palestinian architect and artist, felt overwhelmed. As a recipient of a fellowship that allows Middle Eastern artists to reside in the London museum, she was free to explore the space and investigate her areas of interest. Srouji spent days absorbing the museum’s vast collection, finding herself forming a deep connection with the artifacts, especially those from her homeland. Inspired by her experiences, Srouji created a new show called “But She Still Wears Kohl and Smells Like Roses” for the London Design Festival. The exhibit features an abstract film on the history of glass in Palestine, eight glass replicas of objects found in the museum, and a gallery intervention.
Originally, Srouji intended to catalog the museum’s glass artifacts from Palestine and Greater Syria, uncovering their histories and how they ended up in storage at the museum. However, after discovering that each piece had a violent history, she decided to take a different approach. Srouji’s artistic practice is a response to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, and her politically charged artworks have been exhibited worldwide. Srouji wanted to imagine alternatives to the violent histories she encountered in the museum.
Sitting in her studio, surrounded by her delicate glass pieces, Srouji explains how she related to the museum’s artifacts through her imagination. She chose eight glass pieces, mostly cosmetics containers owned by women in Palestine and Greater Syria during the Roman Empire, and visualized their use in the present. She decided to create replicas of these vessels, arranging them on pedestals in the V&A’s Glass Gallery. Collaborating with glassblowers from a village in the West Bank, Srouji ensured these replicas were perfect copies of the museum objects. She also enlisted the help of a family in Nablus to paint and transform the glassware made by the Jaba’ artisans.
Srouji finds delight in the inversion of value, transforming forgeries into pseudo-artifacts displayed in the museum. She wants to showcase the craftsmanship of Palestinian artisans and suggest that their creations can match the value of excavated artifacts. To mark the absence of the eight removed objects, Srouji designed “tomb cards” inspired by the ones used by British archaeologist Flinders Petrie. Each card reflects Srouji’s imaginings of where the original artifacts came from and where they could return to. The design of the pedestals is inspired by the museum’s behind-the-scenes operations, resembling the boxes and trolleys used for object transportation.
Srouji hopes to bring her reproductions back to Palestine one day, as Palestinians do not have access to these artifacts unless they travel to London. She finds it satisfying to imagine restitution by making ghosts of the originals. While she would send the pieces back if she could, Srouji acknowledges that ending the occupation is the priority for Palestinians.
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