In Houselessness, currently on view at Zawyeh Gallery, Palestinian artist Mohammed Joha offers a quiet yet devastating meditation on what it means to lose a house while still carrying the idea of home. Through layered collages and painted surfaces, Joha transforms fragments of personal memory into fragile yet enduring landscapes.
The exhibition unfolds from a conceptual distinction that resonates deeply: the difference between a house as a physical structure and home as an internal, emotional condition. Joha’s works occupy this threshold. They ask what remains when architecture collapses, when walls are erased, yet belonging refuses to disappear. For the artist—whose ties to Gaza remain central despite decades spent in Europe—this question is painfully real. His own home, along with hundreds of artworks, was recently destroyed, turning memory into both refuge and material.
Zawyeh Gallery’s restrained space allows the works to breathe. Many compositions are divided horizontally, forming horizon lines where sky and land, past and present, stability and rupture meet. The Sea is Mine (2023), a triptych of blue and white expanses, evokes Gaza’s Mediterranean edge. Yet these serene surfaces are constructed from torn paper, fabric, lace, and personal remnants, revealing beauty born from damage and care.
In Houseless No. 4 (2025), a muted grey field dominates the canvas. Subtle seams and fissures run through the surface, while at the lower edge, clusters of colour gather—suggesting windows, facades, and architectural traces that hover between memory and disappearance. The house emerges not as a whole, but as a constellation of surviving parts.
Other works extend this vocabulary. Houseless No. 2 incorporates what appears to be an aged map, its faded grids and coordinates hinting at lost orientation and the longing for direction. Below, blocks of vivid colour assemble into fractured terrains that feel both grounded and unsettled. In Houseless No. 9, stitched threads in red, green, and black traverse pale surfaces, marking attempts to repair, border, or reconnect—small gestures of care within a world resistant to restoration.
Across the exhibition, Joha dismantles the idea of shelter as mere protection. Instead, he builds an emotional architecture made of memory, resilience, and adaptation. These works speak not only to Palestinian experience, but to global diasporic realities—where home becomes something carried within the body, reconstructed again and again through fragments.
Houselessness does not offer resolution. It lingers in the tension between loss and endurance, asking viewers to consider how belonging survives when its physical form is stripped away.
On view until: 11 January 2026
Location: Zawyeh Gallery, Dubai
