Join us for an activation of Kitsch of Return on Wednesday, June 11, at 7 PM and participate in a ritual of ancestral summoning. Together, we will sit with and witness displacement, generational grief, and the ongoing violences of erasure—and, most importantly, question the notion of home. This activation offers a space to gather around everyday objects that hold memory, to listen in stillness, and to honor what remains. In a time marked by housing precarity and collective strain on mental health, we come together to ground ourselves in shared memory, ritual, and care. Through reflection, we open a portal to those who came before, and to the futures we continue to imagine.
Participants are encouraged to bring a personal item as an offering to the altar.
Led by Salma Shaka
Kitsch of Return
Kitsch of Return pays homage to the mass-produced objects lurking around our spaces of dwelling. Where 'cheap' aesthetics meet memory, kitsch has the potential to become a site of longing and resilience by transforming commodities consumed under capitalism into markers of identity. An identity that, for most marginalized around the world, is subjected to constant systemic erasure. In the case of Palestinians, preservation becomes crucial in resisting settler-colonial rule, as decorative pieces act not as mere sentimentalities but rather as acts of defiance. Drawing from Özlem Savaş's research on Turkish homes in Vienna, Kitsch of Return examines how diasporic communities curate their spaces with artifacts that tether them to fractured and displaced homelands, asking the question: how do objects once dismissed as trivial become vessels of memory, identity, and the refusal to disappear? From badly designed postcards of the holy land to beautiful Khalili ceramics, Kitsch of Return invites you to a Palestinian home, one that continues to stand in the face of oppression.
About the artist
Salma Shaka (Umm Bahar) is a Vienna-based multi-media artist and researcher raised between Palestine, Cyprus, Jordan, and the UAE. Her work is an assemblage of the different landscapes she grew up in and is deeply influenced by feeding and foraging rituals from there. She explores the themes of transformation and decay through the long, slow processes of fermentation, jam-making, pickling, and cooking. Food, foremost, acts as a vessel for the summoning of ancestral ghosts and non-human entities who provide lessons of wisdom on climate justice, preservation, and indigenous imagination. Her artist name, "Umm Bahar," meaning the mother of spices and/or the ocean, evokes the spiritual connection between her birth name and the sea, as well as how, at home, she is nicknamed "mother of spices", reflecting the ways she infuses not only her food but her life with fire and depth.
The event is a part of the Fragile Foundations: Art, Mental Health, and Housing Precarity public program. Supported by MA7, BMWKMS, and the 15th District.
