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Raghad Saqfalhait

@raghad.saqfalhait

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Artist and material researcher, Geo-design MA alumna @designacademyeindhoven
Studio @sakeb__

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During these times, I think a lot of the term “Ecological Emptying” which Sudanese architect Ola Hassanain (@olahassanain ) used to describe the situation in her hometown, Al-Khartum. and here I think of the power words have in describing or even comprehending the material reality we live in.

When we talk of occupation crimes, it is often about death tolls, houses destroyed, and people displaced. But to kill is not just to shoot; it is to disrupt the very cycles that make life possible. For Wardeh, this cycle was pot-making; with all the laborious, messy, and time-consuming phases it included. From the moment she strolls in the mountains around the village, rebuilding whatever collapsed stone walls she finds, cultivating and tending to her land, and on her way, collecting the clays she needed for her pottery making. This very cycle of taking care of the land is what gave her life; and staying indoors in winter season would leave her feeling restless.

The land of the villagers in Al-Jib was annexed and sieged in 2003, and Wardeh passed away in 2011. The amount of grief she must have experienced during these last years of her life, as she mourned the loss of her land but still refused to stop making pots, is unthinkable. Until the last year before she died, she still collected clay from old unfired Khawabi, crushed them and recycled them to make new pots. She didn’t quit the cycle until the very last days of her life.

The occupation is violent not just in its military weapons and artificial intelligence. It is violent in the ways it steals life away from you, even when you are still alive. The aggression didn’t start only last week - It’s been happening for 75 years. We have witnessed mass genocides like the one happening now in Gaza, but there's also been the silent, slow, and unreported deaths. We are angry and we shall never forget #75 years of ongoing genocide.

1+2. Pottery making in rural Jerusalem, credit: John Landgraf
3. Ancient Stone walls in Aljib
4. Carmen Badran pointing towards their confiscated land, occupation violent towers looming in the horizon around the village. by @raghad.saqfalhait

The winners of the 2026 DAE Awards!
During the Graduation Show Opening this year’s Gijs Bakker, René Smeets and Melkweg Award winners were revealed: Raghad Saqfalhait, Athanasios Paspaliaris and Louella Exton. Each received €2,000 and a trophy designed by alumna Clara Schweers, produced with MAKE Eindhoven.

Swipe to meet the winning projects ➡️
See their work at the Graduation Show 2026, 17–25 October, at Professor Dorgelolaan 2, Eindhoven.

Photo: @leidykarinagomezmontoya

Winner of the Gijs Bakker Award 2026 Raghad Saqfalhait (Geo–Design) with ‘ The Dead Are Never Inert رماد مسكون’

A multimedia installation that turns to ash, a fundamental component of archaeological soils in Palestine, to reconsider how the land is read, inhabited and valued. While artefacts are extracted, classified and used to construct narratives that are weaponised in the dispossession of Palestinians from their land, Raghad Saqfalhait’s research instead centres on the discarded archaeological soils, which she terms ‘the discard of the discard’. Through film, performance and live analogue projection, the installation takes sakan — Arabic for both ‘ash’ and ‘to inhabit’ — as its point of departure, showing that ash is a living matter not just semantically but materially. By sifting soil beyond the point of scientific value, where it starts to take on a cosmological dimension, the project invites visitors to encounter the land not as a passive archive of the past but as living ground continually formed through inhabitation, cultivation and transformation.

On view at the Graduation Show 2026, 17–25 October.
Photo: Carlfried Verwaayen

Winner of the Melkweg Award 2026: Louella Exton with ‘Tracing Hot Particles: A Matter of Time’.

An installation of warning signs that challenges the idea that nuclear technology can be contained — collecting hidden traces of radioactivity through experimental weather modelling. The jury was impressed by how it brings together scientific sensing, indigenous knowledge and material sensitivity.

On view at the Graduation Show 2026, 17–25 October.
Photo: Ronald Smits

Winner of the René Smeets Award 2026: Athanasios Paspaliaris with ‘Unskilled Worker’.
Filmed e by @raghad.saqfalhait

As a friend once told me, the projects dearest to your heart are usually the hardest to post about.

This project is dear in many ways. “The Dead Are Never Inert” or "رماد مسكون" started with a fascination I had with ash (sakan), a fine dust that appears homogeneous, weightless, grey, and lifeless. In a conversation with Carmen Badran from Aljib, she used the word ‘sakan’ to refer to two things: sakan as ash, and sakan as inhabiting a place. She spoke of El-Ras, the highest point of the village, which had been continuously inhabited for centuries, leaving its soil rich in ash and accumulated deposits.

From there, I began following ash as a living matter: sakan in the soils archaeologists sift through and discard in piles, sakan as a nutrient that gives fertility to the land, and sakan as an archaeological trace, invisible to the eye, that asserts continuity. Walking there, I was reminded to tread lightly so I don’t disturb the souls buried in the soil.

Through film, performance, and analogue projections, The Dead Are Never Inert approaches ash as a living matter. By sifting soil beyond the point of scientific utility, where it starts to take on a cosmological dimension, the project invites visitors to encounter the land not as a passive archive of the past, but as living ground, continually formed through inhabitation and cultivation.

On view during the Graduation Show @designacademyeindhoven opening on Saturday, 17 October, as part of Dutch Design Week 2026.

Image 1: photo by Carlfried Verwaayen
Image 3: An excerpt from my thesis, part of Geo—Design '26 collective publication 💚 by @raghad.saqfalhait

Zibdiyyeh زبديّة in Hangar Ras El Ain, on view until 17 October, part of a beautiful exhibition at @ammandesignweek curated by @faysaltabbarah by @raghad.saqfalhait

“A Body Holds a Body Holds a Body”, the Geo–Design MA Theses Publication 2026, is now available for preorder at the link in bio: https://abodyholdsabody.github.io/a-body-holds-a-body-holds-a-body/preorder.html

We are very proud to have worked collectively on this publication, bringing together the sixteen graduating Geo–Design theses and their entangled urgencies at a time when the ecological, political, and institutional systems we inhabit are under increasing pressure.

Across vastly different scales and sites, the theses trace bacteria, birds, plants, minerals, radioactive isotopes, seeds, oysters, ash, tidal landscapes, ruins, intergenerational memory, darkness, simulations, and gravitational waves.

What connects the works is not a shared subject, but a shared condition: what happens when a living system is abstracted into a resource, a unit, or a baseline?

Taken together, the sixteen theses propose that thinking through scales is not simply a method, but a form of responsibility.

The publication features contributions from department heads @metahaven and thesis tutors @margarida___mendes @vervoz

Heads of Department
@metahaven

Editorial
@dirtglimmer, @plantaasia, @josephineconen, @ludovica.vi_, @mereteuch, @raghad.saqfalhait, @killastabababa

Graphic Design
@carol__jpg, @mathis.maar, @sabina.scortanu, @siriheidweiller, @yakamoz_lu

Production
@dugyungkim, @jules.moizan, @julio_rebora, @liloulemonnier

Website
@carol__jpg

Thesis Tutors
@vervoz, @margarida___mendes

Thesis Publication Design Tutor
@_tatjanasturm

Copy Editing
Kaye Cain-Nielsen

Tutors
@lawoodgate, @alless0, @baharnoorizadeh, @c_zetti, @e__type, @pistachio_date, @nvisible.studio, @floriane_misslin, @gabriel.a.maher, @giudittavendrame, @_tatjanasturm, @iraklisabekia, @jeroenvandegruiter, @margarida___mendes, @mrootbernstein, @vervoz, @parasiteparasite, @vibekemascini, @enissay.b & @maudoupioupiou

Typefaces
NewEdge666 by @charlotte__rohde
Solæ by @gwennina.moigne.studio

Supported by @designacademyeindhoven by @raghad.saqfalhait

"Zibdiyyeh" is a ceramic butter churn I built last year during my studies in Geo-Design at @designacademyeindhoven . Named after the traditional khaddadet el-zibdeh خضاضة الزبدة once made in Jaba’, Zibdiyyeh is hand-built based on documentation by anthropologist John Landgraf in the 1970’s on traditional Palestinian pottery, a period after which many of these practices gradually disappeared. The work follows the recorded dimensions and methods of making, approaching its reconstruction as a form of experimental archaeology where artefacts become sites of experimentation and inquiry rather than objects for preservation and indexation.

Thanks to my tutor @c_zetti , who helped me build it, I was introduced to a technique of sealing ceramics with milk, which was prevalent in pastoral societies with abundance of leftover milk. I adapted this technique to the butter churn, where it was bisque-fired and soaked in milk to absorb the fats before being low-temperature fired again to seal its porous surface @dekunstclub.nl . In this way, milk is present in three different forms: a sealing layer, raw milk inside the vessel, and butter as a byproduct of churning.

More to follow on the worlds I unraveled and things I learned during the past two years of intensive research, writing, and making at the Geo-Design department 💙 by @raghad.saqfalhait

Arts Catalyst are proud to mark the culmination of Soil Futures with a new website and the Soil Futures Podcast: Where the Soil Begins and Ends. 🌱

Soil Futures was a collaboration between organisations @artscatalyst (UK), @riwaq_palestine (Palestine), @sakiyaorg (Palestine), @struggels.for.sovereignty (Indonesia), and @vessel_artproject (Italy). Between 2022 and 2023, Soil Futures took the shape of a programme featuring an artist residency exchange, an online school, and a season of distributed local gatherings. Grounded within the localities where each organisation is based, the residency programme created an intercultural exchange between artists, ecologists, activists, and soil caretakers to collectively mobilise existing and future knowledges of soil.

Some of these experiences and learnings were gathered together by @bintmbareh through a podcast featuring the voices of the Soil Futures artists in residence @raghad.saqfalhait, @marieanneherve, and @alwahat.collective.

The artists reflect on their research residencies in Palestine and Italy and the landscapes, stories, and people they encountered: Raghad delves into her work with clay between Al-Jib in Palestine and Salento in Southern Italy; Marie describes the time she spent with stones and the stories they tell in Qalandiya, near Jerusalem; Al-Wah’at share their collaborative work in Ein Qiniya contemplating the significance of the prickly pear and the cochineal insect for the Palestinian land.

To access the new website and listen to the podcast, head to the link in our bio! 🪏

Soil Futures was funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants, which are designed to support UK and overseas organisations to collaborate on international arts projects.

–

Al-Wah’at Collective’s residency with Sakiya in Palestine at the start of 2023 engaged with the ecological and socio-political complexities of the prickly pear cactus and the cochineal insect across multiple geographies, communities, and temporalities.

Image credit: Ahmad Talat
Image description contained in alt text.

Al-Wah’at’s Soil Futures residency was titled Wild Hedges, in reference to the degradation of the prickly pear, a by @raghad.saqfalhait

Our essay “Earthen Inheritances” is out on e-flux architecture as part of Palestinian Repairs series, a collaborative project developed by Emilio Distretti and e-flux architecture, with the support of RIWAQ - Centre for Architectural Conservation @riwaq_palestine , the Birzeit University Museum @bzu.museum , and the School of Architecture at the Royal College of Art in London @rca_soa .

This essay examines al-khabiyeh; an earthern grain storage unit central to agrarian life in Palestine, as a site of continuous destruction and repair. By following the processes of its making and remaking, the essay reflects on the tension between the object’s ephemeral materiality and its historical role as a tool for sustenance and future preparedness. Through an exploration of clay’s restorative qualities, we consider how the rebuilding of khawabi today operates as a forward-looking gesture: one that sustains intergenerational knowledge beyond the object itself, while resisting ongoing settler-colonial erasure in Palestine.

We’re very grateful for @sakiyaorg for hosting our khabiyeh-building workshop last year, and continuing its life with a group of participants who rebuilt it after its destruction by Israeli settlers, as part of “Of Mud and Iron” exhibition at Khalil Sakakini Center in Ramallah, curated by @ljudeh 🌾

Many thanks to Nick Axel @alucidwake and Emilio Distretti for their thoughtful edits 🙏🏽 by @raghad.saqfalhait

Pictures from last night’s panel discussion on pedagogy and filmmaking with Palestinian filmmakers @mahmoud.beshtawi and @raghad.saqfalhait moderated by @noor_abed on the back of the Spotlight on Palestinian Filmmaking at the DAE Grad Show. A big thank you to all who came, to @lab_1_eindhoven and @trashclubtrash for hosting us, to @lucyhodgesellers for co-ordinating and of course to @mahmoud.beshtawi @raghad.saqfalhait and @noor_abed for their time, knowledge and care. by @raghad.saqfalhait

August 10th, according to popular tradition, is the night of the shooting stars. 🌠
Join us at @organicoperduca at 21:30, in collaboration with the third edition of @concortofilmfestival , for an evening of open-air cinema in the Val Trebbia.

Among the selected short films, we are proud to present for the first time at Teatro Organico the video work 'La Montagna è Ancora in Movimento' by @raghad.saqfalhait , created in Travo as part of @unaboccatadarte 2023.
Using local archives and conducting a series of interviews, the artist has created an emotional mapping of the inhabitants of Travo, based on the belief that landscape and community are symbiotic organisms.

Before the screening, it will also be possible to have dinner on site from 19:00. For info, please contact @organicoperduca

Raghad Saqfalhait
La Montagna è Ancora in Movimento, 2023
Stills from the video
Una Boccata d’Arte 2023, Travo, Emilia-Romagna
ph and video by Daniele Signaroldi

@raghad.saqfalhait @concortofilmfestival @unaboccatadarte @organicoperduca @comune_travo @fondazioneelpis @galleriacontinua @threesproductions @daniele_signaroldi @regione_emiliaromagna #teatroorganico #organicoperduca #pietraperduca #pietraparcellara #valtrebbia by @raghad.saqfalhait

Following Salsola down the Jordan valley by @raghad.saqfalhait

Nablus, today by @raghad.saqfalhait