Bouchra Khalili: Circles and Storytellers / Dima Srouji: Four Moons from Home

Mosaic Rooms has reopened to the public following a year of extensive refurbishment and organisational reconfiguration. Founded in London in 2009, Mosaic Rooms supports and amplifies contemporary culture from the Arab world and beyond. The reopening marks a significant institutional milestone as the organisation enters a new chapter as an independent charity, building on the foundations established by the A.M. Qattan Foundation.

Under the leadership of newly appointed Director Pip Day, alongside the team and a recently formed Board of Trustees, Mosaic Rooms reaffirms its role as a space of refuge and resilience, focusing on strengthening infrastructures of solidarity, while deepening its engagement with artists, thinkers and communities navigating urgent political realities.

“In a moment of profound uncertainty and unfathomable violence, spaces like Mosaic Rooms, which holds Palestine as its compass, are vital—not only as sites of refuge in these inadmissible times, but as platforms for critical discourse, collective learning and cultural resistance.” —Pip Day

Permanent commission
Dima Srouji: Four Moons from Home*
The refurbished building is anchored by Four Moons from Home, a permanent site-specific commission by Palestinian architect, artist and academic Dima Srouji. Installed in the new entrance, the work comprises large-scale stained-glass windows carved in Jerusalem stone by artisans in Bethlehem. The stones journeyed from Palestine to London, and embed material histories within the fabric of the building itself.

Drawing on the centuries-old tradition of Qamariya (half-moon) windows found across Yemen, Egypt, Syria and Palestine, the work honours the stone carvers and glassblowers who have illuminated homes and sacred spaces across the region. The windows celebrate the four seasons through carvings and coloured glass patterned on the seasonal flora of Palestine, while also standing as a tribute to the more than thirty Qamariya windows destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces in the Haram al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem in recent years.

Casting shifting light and shadow across the entrance, the commission offers both a gesture of welcome and a meditation on permanence, endurance and cultural continuity in a time marked by forced disappearance and erasure. Srouji describes her approach to endangered histories and cultural heritage as making space for “potential collective repair”, a principle that underpins Mosaic Rooms as it reopens.

Reopening exhibition
Bouchra Khalili: Circles and Storytellers**
February 18–June 14, 2026
Circles and Storytellers is the first UK solo exhibition by French-Moroccan multidisciplinary artist and educator Bouchra Khalili. Bringing together The Circle Project (2023) and The Public Storyteller (2024), the exhibition marks the culmination of Khalili’s decade-long research into the overlooked history of the Mouvement des Travailleurs Arabes (MTA) and its theatre groups Al Assifa and Al Halaka.

Active between 1973 and 1977, these groups were led by Maghrebi undocumented workers and French students advocating for social justice and artistic freedom in France. Khalili’s works focus in particular on the forgotten candidacy of Djelalli Kamal, who ran in the 1974 French presidential election as “the candidate of those who cannot vote.” Taking the circle and the assembly as both form and method, the exhibition foregrounds storytelling and performance as tools for forging communities and imagining alternative civic futures. 

Public spaces and programme
Mosaic Rooms' refurbishment introduces expanded public spaces designed to support creative learning, gathering, exchange and sustained cultural work. These include a redesigned Bookshop focused on independent and self-published work; Sound Capsule, a live radio and broadcast space for collaborative practice; the Play Room, a space for children and their adults; the Salon, hosting discursive and participatory public programming; and a newly designed garden conceived in dialogue with Srouji’s commission.

The upcoming public programme includes Footnote to the Present, bringing together artists, filmmakers, writers and theatre makers engaging performance and collective rehearsal as sites of political possibility; In Response: Four Moons from Home, a year-long seasonal programme responding to Srouji’s installation; live broadcasts in collaboration with Radio Alhara; and other performances, readings and gatherings including A Place without a Door, inspired by prison literature and developed with long-term partners and communities.

As Mosaic Rooms reopens, it does so carrying the realities that have unfolded during its closure. The organisation returns with a renewed commitment to holding histories, nurturing solidarities, and creating space for collective futures to be imagined—and built—together.

Upcoming programme highlights
Dirar Kalash, In Response: March 12, 7–9:30pm, durational sound piece and response to Four Moons from Home
Faster than light, always: April 17, 7–9:30pm, performance with musician Julmud, and dancers Sasha Shadid and Adan Azzam
Small Press Fest: June 6–7, independent publishers' book fair hosted by Mosaic Rooms

*Four Moons from Home is made possible with support from Art Fund and Al-Qattan Charitable Trust. 

**Circles and Storytellers is generously supported by Al-Qattan Charitable Trust, Arts Council England, the Elephant Trust and Fluxus Art Projects. With support from Gallo Acoustics.

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