DAAR - DECOLONIZING ARCHITECTURE ART RESEARCH
Born & Lives in:
Palestine, Italy, Sweden
Established:
2003, Palestine
Location
- Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney
The artistic research practice of DAAR (DECOLONIZING ARCHITECTURE ART RESEARCH) – led by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti – is situated between architecture, art, pedagogy and politics. Over the last two decades, they have developed a series of research projects that are both theoretically ambitious and practically engaged in the struggle for justice and equality. For DAAR, art exhibitions are both sites of display and sites of action that spill over into other contexts: built architectural structures, the shaping of critical learning environments, interventions that challenge dominant collective narratives, the production of new political imaginations, the formation of civic spaces and the re-definition of concepts.
DAAR (DECOLONIZING ARCHITECTURE ART RESEARCH), ḥaṣīra (حصیرة): Framing and Unframing, 2026. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Alserkal Arts Foundation. Courtesy of the artist © DAAR (DECOLONIZING ARCHITECTURE ART RESEARCH). Installation view, 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, 2026, Chau Chak Wing Museum. Photograph: David James.
DAAR (DECOLONIZING ARCHITECTURE ART RESEARCH)
Established 2007, Palestine
Based in Beit Sahour (Bethlehem), Palestine
hasīra ( حصيرة): Framing and Unframing 2026
ḥaṣīra, donated objects
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Alserkal Arts Foundation
Courtesy of the artists
A ḥaṣīra ( حصیرة) or portable woven mat, can turn any ground into a place for meeting, hosting, mourning, celebrating, striking, or gathering. Its root ر–ص–ح(ḥ-ṣ-r) means to frame, to enclose, to define limits. Architects Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, as the collaborative initiative DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research), write that “In Palestine and across the Arab world, the ḥaṣīra frames territory, creates a room without walls, and declares: Here we host. Here we belong for as long as we are here.”
For DAAR, the adaptability of the ḥaṣīra is both practical and political, allowing conversation to unfurl in spaces where infrastructure may have been removed or simply denied.
In ḥaṣīra ( حصیرة): Framing and Unframing, DAAR use the ḥaṣīra as a container for discussions about decolonisation, in collaboration with Fairfield’s Think + DO Tank Foundation through a series of gatherings across Sydney.
In a series of structured conversations hosted across Sydney, each ḥaṣīra provided the setting and catalyst for participants to come together allowing a conversation to unfold. Participants contribute to the material setting of each ḥaṣīra, bringing and leaving objects that remain folded within it as witnesses to the gathering. Before entering the exhibition space, the used ḥaṣīras pass through the museum’s conservation process, including a period of cold storage.
Positioning these conversations, and the ḥaṣīra themselves, as the fabric of togetherness, DAAR presents any shared ground as a space for unfolding and reframing.
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