The seeds of Dear Laila were planted when Basel Zaraa’s five-year-old daughter started asking him about his childhood home. Unable to take her there, he decided to try to bring that place to her, creating a model of her childhood home in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus.
Dear Laila shares the Palestinian experience of displacement and resistance through one family’s story, exploring how war and exile are experienced through everyday, domestic and public space. An intimate and interactive installation experienced by only one viewer at a time, Dear Laila uses memory storytelling and tactile details to bring this now-destroyed place to life.
Dear Laila is an interactive installation that is experienced by a single viewer at a time.
Each experience lasts about 15 minutes.