Amira’s Castle
Amira’s Castle is an ongoing exploration of Maen’s grandparents’ lives – Amira and Mohammad – and his own documentation of the Palestinian present. At its center are three threads: his grandfather’s revolutionary archive, his grandmother’s daily practice of tending to the land they reclaimed, and his documentation of the struggle unfolding today. Together they form a dialogue across time, drawing the archive and the land into conversation, and pressing him to confront his responsibility in carrying those legacies forward today.
“Apricot season on my Teta's land.” – Maen Hammad, Helhul, Palestine, 2025
Members of Ahmad Mutair’s (17) family bid him farewell before he was laid to rest in 2023. Earlier that day, dozens of Israeli forces entered Qalandia camp in an early morning raid. Ahmad was standing on his roof when an Israeli sniper shot a bullet that went through his chest. Ahmad was a fourth- generation refugee. After he was shot, his family spent over 30 minutes trying to take him to a nearby hospital outside Qalandia refugee camp. Israeli forces did not allow Ahmad’s family to leave. Eventually they found an ambulance on the outskirts of the camp which took Ahmad’s body to the Ramallah hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Children walk home after school on the destroyed streets of Tulkarem refugee camp in Palestine, on 1 October 2024. The destruction followed Israel’s siege of the camp, after two years of escalating colonial violence. The camp has since been completely depopulated and ethnically cleansed. Today, the Israeli army uses it to train soldiers before entering Gaza.
“My grandmother watering her herb and flower garden.” – Maen Hammad
An archive photograph of Maen’s grandfather (center) laying a wreath of flowers at Vladimir Lenin's tomb with a delegation from the Baath party in 1970.
