Birzeit, Palestine — The Palestinian Museum and the Sukhtian Foundation today launched BASAR Art Residency, a fully funded, two- to three-month residency for Palestinian artists, curators, arts educators, and cultural practitioners in the diaspora. Based at the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, BASAR invites residents to research and work from Palestine. Applications are now open for the inaugural edition, which will take place in the first half of 2027.
BASAR residents can develop research-led artistic and cultural projects engaging with Palestinian cultural narratives, histories, memory, and everyday life, and exploring Palestinian futurities through artistic production and community engagement. The programme offers unique access to the Museum’s archives, collections, exhibitions, and cultural networks, and creates avenues for exchange with artists and cultural practitioners in Palestine, alongside field visits and conversations on artistic practice and cultural work questions.
BASAR takes its name from the Arabic baṣar, or sight, and evokes baṣīra, or insight shaped by experience and research. It also calls up ṣabr, or endurance: the experience of forced distance in the diaspora and of life under occupation, as well as the cactus that still grows on the sites of Palestinian villages whose inhabitants were forcibly displaced, a visible trace where much else has been erased. Between baṣar and ṣabr, the residency places the Palestine shaped through memory and imagination alongside Palestine as lived today, asking what new questions and images might emerge from holding the two together.
The residency covers travel, accommodation, and production costs, and includes a monthly stipend, studio space, institutional support, field visits, opportunities for public engagement, and a final public presentation. Applications may be submitted in Arabic or English until 30 November 2026, with results to be announced between January and February 2027.
Muna Sukhtian, a board member of the Sukhtian Foundation, said: “BASAR grew from a conviction that the arts are vital if communities are to flourish and if the Palestinian experience is to be preserved, shared, and given vibrant, evolving expression. Through this partnership with the Palestinian Museum, we hope to help build a cultural environment where creativity can thrive, artists can connect with place and community, and younger generations can express their own visions of Palestine and its futurities.”
Amer Shomali, Director of the Palestinian Museum, noted: “BASAR emerges from the distinctive relationship Palestinians in the diaspora have formed with Palestine over generations of distance and separation, sustained through memory, language, stories, images, and cultural practices. Through the residency, we bring those ties into contact with Palestine as lived today: its people, places, archives, and cultural life. Residents can then revisit the images and understandings formed from afar, turning the distance between the Palestine they have carried with them and the Palestine they encounter into material for research and artistic practice.”
Rana Al-Salem, general director of the Sukhtian Foundation, added: “A core part of the Foundation’s arts and culture programme, the inaugural BASAR residency reflects our commitment to investing in artists across disciplines. It creates real opportunities for artists to develop their skills and produce new work, while highlighting Palestinian cultural narratives.”
BASAR is a joint initiative of the Palestinian Museum and the Sukhtian Foundation, enabling Palestinian practitioners in the diaspora to research and work from Palestine and build connections with its artistic and cultural scene.
For more information and to apply, visit: https://palmuseum.org/en/Art-residency
For residency enquiries, contact residency@palmuseum.org.