Meet the Makers: Samah Hijawi

The Moon in your Mouth (2025). Source: Samah Hijawi.

In this Meet the Makers conversation, we will engage in conversation with multi-media artist, astrologer and dramaturg Samah Hijawi. Hijawi has been involved as a dramaturg in the creation process of Khadija El Kharraz Alami’s SHRINE, an immersive performance about grief, rage, and radical resistance, presented at Spring Festival 2026. We will talk about the creative process, and how to work as a dramaturg with a rich variety of sources, as the performance draws on North African ceremonial traditions, feminist thought, including the work of Silvia Federici, and Molière’s The Misanthrope. In SHRINE, El Kharraz Alami reimagines Molière’s classical character of Alceste through the perspective of a woman. By doing so, she questions historical and contemporary structures that have marginalized women and erased their roles within society. What is the role of research, in such a process, and how do these sources inspire specific dramaturgical questions? How does one make theatre out of political essays? SHRINE is conceptualised as a ritual, and we will also spend some time reflecting on how collective ritual can open pathways toward strength, solidarity and re-imagination.

Second, we will look into another project by Samah Hijawi, Aesthetics of the Political, an on-going research on critical languages and forms of resistance in artistic works related to traces of colonialities in art-making. Through different forms of encounter, the project focuses on creating intimate, artist-to-artist conversations to reflect on how practitioners translate their ideas; the materials that they read, and their reflections on different political subjects—into artistic form. Over time, the idea is to form a lexicon of artistic languages, and an archive of the works of practitioners from different parts of the world, that respond to hegemonic power, as well as the social, political and economic systems that produce inequalities in different contexts around the world.

The session will be moderated by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink (Utrecht University).

About the speaker

Samah Hijawi (1976) is a multimedia artist based in Brussels. Her projects are research based, and deeply rooted in historical narrative. From ancient history she takes inspiration for re-staging and representing contemporary life beyond the limited, polarized discourses that direct our lives today. Her research lies at the intersection between ancient mythology and farming, astrology and the spiritual traditions that connect us with larger cosmologies beyond earth.
Her works have been shown in Bukhara Bienniel 2025, KANAL Centre Pompidou Brussels, Vooruit Gent, AM Qattan Foundation Palestine, The Royal Museum of Fine Arts Brussels, Museum M Leuven, The Hayward Gallery in London, BOZAR and Beursschouwburg in Brussels, Bureau Europa- Maastricht, MoMa and Apex Art – New York; Darat al Funun in Jordan, among others.

If you wish to attend, RSVP via this link.

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Meet the Makers is a series by The Creative Humanities Academy, a platform that fosters collaboration and knowledge exchange between cultural and creative professionals and academic researchers and students.

Here you can find the full Meet the Makers programme and archive.

*Location to be confirmed.