Basel Zaraa
The Diaspora of the Sign: Between Word, Body, and Resistance
Basel Zaraa is a Palestinian artist born in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria. He moved to the United Kingdom in 2010 to join his English wife, whom he had married in Yarmouk. He is a spoken word artist, stencil graffiti creator, and musician, and has collaborated with international artists such as Akala, the Palestinian hip-hop group Katibeh Khamseh, and Tania El Khoury.
His collaborations with Tania El Khoury on the projects As Far As My Fingertips Take Me and its second iteration, As Far As Isolation Goes, focused on individual audience participation: through touch, music, and performance, themes such as exile, refugee journeys, and the mental and physical health of refugees in the United Kingdom were explored. These projects have been presented at over 30 international festivals and cultural institutions.
Basel Zaraa is a Palestinian artist born in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria and now based in the United Kingdom. A spoken word poet, musician, and stencil graffiti artist, Zaraa has made art a form of intimate and political resistance, capable of restoring body and voice to those often reduced to numbers or statistics. After moving to London in 2010, he embarked on an artistic path deeply connected to the experience of exile, marginality, and the struggle for justice. His collaborations with international artists—including Akala, the Palestinian hip-hop collective Katibeh Khamseh, and, most notably, Lebanese artist Tania El Khoury—have given rise to performative works that transcend the boundary between art and activism.
In the projects As Far As My Fingertips Take Me and As Far As Isolation Goes, audience participation is central: through a wall, the artist draws on the viewer’s arm while his voice narrates stories of forced migration, persecution, and lives suspended between borders. In these performances, touch becomes language, the body a narrative surface, and the drawing a mark that remains even after it is erased. The project As Far As Isolation Goes, in particular, powerfully addresses the theme of refugees’ mental health, exploring the psychological consequences of isolation, detention, and the sense of estrangement that many of them continue to experience even in their host countries.
Zaraa’s words and music, born from conversations with refugee friends and colleagues, transform individual experience into a collective act of listening and care. As the artist himself stated, “with every arm I draw on, I am trying to tell the story of myself, my family and my people.” The themes of exile, trauma, and alienation are addressed with a poetic force that never shies away from political denunciation. His works have been presented at over thirty international festivals and cultural institutions, receiving significant attention for their ability to emotionally engage audiences and transform listening into a bodily experience.
Through his words, music, and marks, Basel Zaraa continues to narrate the Palestinian condition from a diasporic and radically human perspective, transforming the wound of exile into a poetic and political gesture.
@ Elettra Stamboulis
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