Jumana Manna is a visual artist and filmmaker whose work explores the intersection of history, politics and material culture, with a particular focus on the body, land, and the entanglements of power. Working across moving images, sculpture and installation, Manna’s practice is marked by a poetic and rigorous inquiry into how forms of persistence and resistance are embedded in both objects and living systems.

Jumana Manna’s embroidered textile works draw on the radical spirit of defiance that runs through Palestinian history. Through the gesture of activating both collective and intimate practices – each carrying within them modes of resilience against erasure – Manna inscribes the experience of isolation onto the collective body, linking carceral confinement to public memory. Combining fiction, documentary and archival footage, Foragers reveals the impact of these environmental policies on ancestral Palestinian wild plant harvesting traditions. The pleasure and knowledge associated with these centuries-old traditions stand in stark contrast to Israel’s nature conservation laws. The work shows the resilience of traditions in the face of legal prohibitions and raises questions about the politics of extinction. Who decides what survives?

we refuse_d is produced by Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, on the occasion of their 15th anniversary, and presented in partnership with M HKA.
Curated by Nadia Radwan and Vasıf Kortun.