Izla Malki

Landless, Not Rootless

A personal and collective journey for connection in diaspora

Since semester 7, I've been working on a project deeply rooted in my identity. It felt necessary to visit the land of my ancestors: Tur Abdin, the area where my Aramean roots lie. That journey was both painful and comforting. Painful because of the stories of those who remain, carrying with them pain, migration, and loss. But also comforting because I recognised something there that felt like coming home. The smell of the wind, the earth beneath my feet in Turo d Izlo—it touched something within me.

My work, Landless, Not Rootless, arose from that experience. It explores loss, migration, and identity not only as personal themes, but as a larger narrative of the Aramean diaspora: an existence that extends across borders, yet remains firmly rooted in memory.

I brought back soil from Tur Abdin, which I processed into paint for paintings on fabric and handmade paper. In performance videos, my body moves through this earth, while the voices of elders tell their stories of genocide, survival, and resilience.

My installation invites the viewer into a sensory experience of seeing, listening, smelling, and feeling. The materials used are not neutral: the earth carries history within itself. The body thus becomes a bearer of memory.

Vulnerability is central to my work, not as a breaking point, but as a source of strength.
Identity appears here not as something fixed, but as something that is constantly being reshaped in the tension between connection and alienation, between memory and loss.

In this in-between zone, I try to create space. A place where the personal and the collective story can meet. Landless, Not Rootless depicts how connection in diaspora remains possible. The work makes room for what is at risk of disappearing and gives a voice to what often remains unseen.

In this way, vulnerability becomes not a weakness, but a foundation for recognition, for connection—and for healing.