Belonging through Practice | Gallery Talk
For the London Festival of Architecture 2026, the Palestine Collective seeks to inaugurate its exhibition with a speaking event and panel discussion on the evening of June 26, 2026. Titled ‘Belonging through Practice’, this programme seeks to foreground architectural and artistic practices that engage with questions of Arab diaspora, displacement, and the reconstruction of identity across geographies.
As part of the programme, we have invited 3 academics and practitioners whose work resonates with these themes across the MENA region. Rather than following a traditional lecture format, we hope to foster dialogue through paired presentations, allowing for meaningful exchanges between complementary practices. Each speaker will be invited to share selected past or ongoing work, followed by a moderated discussion with fellow speakers and the audience.
Speakers / Panelists:
Nihad Sharief is a Black Muslim Sudanese woman born to first-generation immigrants, with a strong interest in Sudanese architecture and cultural identity. Her work explores how built environments can reflect heritage, memory, and displacement. Inspired by current events in Sudan, she aims to use design to raise awareness and create meaningful spaces that reconnect communities with their cultural roots.
Dr Mirna Pedalo (Architects for Gaza) is an architectural practitioner, researcher, and scholar whose interests lie at the intersection of architecture, urban development, and environmental issues in post-conflict societies. She holds a PhD from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, and teaches at the Royal College of Art, University of Westminster, and Oxford Brookes University. She is a Steering Member and the Education Cluster co-lead at Architects for Gaza (AFG). She will be speaking on behalf of AFG during the event.
Gabriella Demczuk (Al-Wah'at): is a Lebanese-American multidisciplinary artist, researcher, and Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, where she teaches Media Studies and Environmental Architecture. She holds a distinction-awarded MA from Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture and a BA in Fine Arts and Journalism from the George Washington University. Her practice explores the intersection of political ecology, visual culture, and elemental media to investigate spatial power, environmental justice, and food sovereignty. Gabriella is a co-founder of Al-Wah’at, an artist-research collective building communal, ecological, and artistic practices of care and repair in response to growing aridity in the Mediterranean.
Moderator:
Zain Al-Sharaf Wahbeh is a London-based Palestinian archival researcher and Architect at Orms. She completed her architectural studies at the University of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Art, and the Architectural Association. She confronts the erasures of her Palestinian hometown in Yafa through archival and documentary practices.
