ARTIST. ARCHITECT. WITNESS.
Where form meets grief, and the ache of displacement will not look away.
If a piece has moved you it can be yours.
Originals, prints & commissions by Tala Akkawi available on request.
Tala is a speaker and mentor with Diversity Role Models, and is available for speaking engagements on LGBTQIA+, Palestinian art, and political resistance.
Portion of all commissions donated to charities like MAP, DIVA Charitable Trust & Asfari Foundation. Our charitable partner may change as needs evolve.
The Weight of an ideology
What’s so special about this piece of land?
Process video; The Weight of an Ideology, 2025
Concrete, welded steel, galvanised steel & pigment
Ht: 76cm x 72cm x 19cm · 2025
What do you perceive when your gaze lands upon this? A chaotic jumble of metal, a wild tangle? Or perhaps something deeper, something that whispers tales untold?
Concrete poured over land, anchored by steel.
The bars representing countries scarred by destruction—
echoes felt far beyond: the whole world behind bars.
Bloodlines, histories, wounds—bleeding into one another, intertwined.
The entire weight hangs on a single steel bracket—
a symbol of the ideology driving the tension: Zionism.
Malak Mesleh, a young female Palestinian boxer
Inspired by Malak Mesleh
Process video; Malak Mesleh, 2025
Concrete, galvanised steel, wood & fire on canvas
Ht: 80cm x 59cm · 2025
Inspired by Malak Mesleh, a female teenage Palestinian boxer, tragically killed by Israel in an airstrike.
The painting is made with concrete, metal, and set on fire, echoing the apocalyptic scenes we’ve witnessed. Olive trees whisper in the distant haze, seen through the ruin of a once-beloved window.
Malak’s shadow is carved into the wall, her spirit rising from the wreckage to reunite with the her land: Palestine.
Watch @yasser.abuwazna's documentary here:
https://www.trtworld.com/article/12771864
Convergence of Olive Orchards & the Apartheid Wall Part I
Concrete, galvanised steel, pigment & cardboard on wood
Ht: 98cm x 74cm · 2024
This work captures the collision between rooted life and imposed division. Ancient olive orchards: symbols of continuity, memory, and belonging press against the stark geometry of the apartheid wall, where concrete interrupts soil and horizon. The landscape becomes a site of tension: organic forms meeting brutal architecture, heritage confronting erasure.
In this convergence, the earth remembers what the wall attempts to silence.
Seek Absolution Through Revolution
Seek Absolution Through Revolution
Process video; Seek Absolution Through Revolution, 2025
Ink, acrylic, oil paint on wood
Ht: 250cm x 112cm · 2025
Painted during last summer's urgent call for revolution -
Now it's time to come together and unite.
We’re still divided; by religion, race, sexuality, age, approach...
Lines drawn by design to create separation.
What if the real problem isn’t our differences -
but the separation we’ve been taught to believe?
What does a revolution look like for you?
Who will you vote for?
Should I cut the piece?
Convergence of olive orchards & the apartheid wall Part II
This piece is a cry for conscience. A reminder that Jesus was Palestinian — that his teachings were rooted in this very land: justice, forgiveness, mercy, care for the vulnerable, and non-violence.
Process video; Convergence of Olive Orchards & the Wall, Part II, 2025
Concrete, galvanised steel & pigment on canvas
Ht: 43cm x 53cm · 2025
This work confronts a world turned upside down. Where those who expose crimes are punished, and perpetrators walk free as celebrities. Where terror becomes governance, and accountability dissolves into impunity.
We witness cities reduced to rubble, ancient olive orchards erased, and an entire people stripped of dignity and land. Palestine is a civilisation rich with history, culture, and life - systematically being dismantled since 1895.
These are not radical ideas. They are human ones.
Bring justice. Bring peace.
Commemoration of the children taken too soon, handwritten names and ages, December 2023
AMOULIE . COLOUR CANNOT CONCEAL THE GRIEF
Acrylic on canvas · Acrylic on Print, series
Ht: 90cm x 70cm each · 2024
It was deeply emotional seeing Amoulie for the first time on a video; small, shivering, far from anywhere a child should be. I eventually found her, and her family. They were inside a Syrian refugee camp. From there, the work began. She chose the colours for the series herself, and so the paintings became, in a small way, her work as much as mine.
A series of portraits across colour fields; each version a
different season of grief and survival. Vibrancy and grief
are forced to share the same surface. The eyes hold what
colour cannot conceal.
The Amoulie series was sold to raise funds for the Asfari Foundation.
MARIA . THE RUBBLE HELD HER LIKE THE EARTH HOLDS SEEDS
Plaster, acrylic, oil · 2 layers
Ht: 60cm x 50cm x 3.3cm · 2024
Maria was a girl rescued from rubble. I found her in footage online; machinery with sparks and flames working through concrete to free her. The images were distressing. I chose to hold her differently in the work; not in the moment of her extraction, but in her wholeness.
Maria's face emerges through cracked, textured layers; paint over plaster, surface over wound. She is whole. She is here.
The title borrows from agriculture. Rubble is not only an ending; it is also the soil where life is forced to begin again. The work refuses to choose between mourning and survival. It insists, gently, on both.
This site is my witness: to injustice, to identity, to the places that made me and the ones being unmade.
Art is not decoration. It is testimony.
For justice. For Palestine. For all the unnamed — and for every voice that refused to stay silent.
Photo: Misan Harriman / @misanharriman