When someone asks, “Where are you from?”, the answer is often simple: just the name of a country. But for many migrants displaced by war, it is no longer answered with the name of a country, but with a story. A story of loss, movement, and survival. For them, home becomes something that is felt rather than found, evoked by a smell in the air, a sound in the distance, or a moment that passes too quickly to hold. Even if home can no longer be pinpointed on a map, many migrants carry it with them in other ways, such as through memories, objects, scents, and fleeting sensations that recreate a mental geography only they can navigate. This deeply personal sense of place was at the heart of an evocative exhibition titled “From the image, we build walls, a roof and windows,” held at the French Institute in Cairo in collaboration with Kalam Aflam – an association dedicated to nurturing Arab arts and supporting emerging voices from the region. Among the participating artists were Palestinian artist Amal Al-Nakhala and Sudanese artist Ola Mohamed, both of whom recently arrived in…
