Palestinian Hospitality is a combined activist intervention, delegated performance and audio guide that draws inspiration from the exhibition Palestinian Artists organised by The Plastic Arts Section P.L.O and Kunstnernes Hus in 1981. The exhibition featured 16 Palestinian artists, including Samia Halaby, Mona Saudi and Mustafa Al-Hallajt. 

In interviews, the Palestinian artists emphasise how important the collaboration with Norwegian artists was in the exhibition process. Halaby wanted to donate his work to the Norwegian working class as a thank you after his stay, while Saudi contacted the UN to donate a sculpture.*

The title Palestinian Hospitality stems from an interview with Halaby conducted in 2024 on behalf of Fiksdal and Siljeholm. Halaby, who lives and works in the US, recently had a solo exhibition at Indiana University cancelled, an exhibition that was to have been the 87-year-old's first retrospective in the US: ‘Clearly the intent is to suppress Palestinian voices at this very time."** In the context of Masahat 2024, the audience will meet Samia Halaby in the service of art, politics and revolution.

*Source: Kunstnernes Hus archive at the National Museum

**Samia Halaby to Hyperallergic, 11.1.24

Palestinian Hospitality was a commissioned work for the Mashat festival 2024 and part of Fiksdal and Siljeholm's work towards a larger performative exhibition at Kunstnernes Hus in autumn 2025.

Thanks to Therese Næss Diesen for sound design.