BASAR Art Residency 2027 at the Palestinian Museum

Organisation: Palestinian Museum and Sukhtian Foundation
Location: Birzeit, Palestine
Funding: Fully funded, including travel, accommodation, production costs and a monthly stipend
Duration: 2–3 months
Residency dates: January–June 2027
Eligibility: Palestinian artists, curators, arts educators and cultural practitioners in the diaspora
Languages: Arabic or English
Application deadline: 30 November 2026

The Palestinian Museum and the Sukhtian Foundation announce the inaugural edition of BASAR, a fully funded art residency for Palestinian artists, curators, arts educators and cultural practitioners in the diaspora.

BASAR supports research-led artistic and cultural work that explores Palestinian cultural narratives, histories, memory and everyday life and, through artistic production and public engagement, imagines Palestinian futures.

Residents are provided with time, resources and access to the Museum’s archives, exhibitions, collections and cultural networks in Palestine. The residency also creates opportunities for exchange and collaboration with local artists and cultural practitioners.

About the Residency

BASAR takes its name from the Arabic baṣar, meaning sight, and speaks to the shift the residency can prompt in participants’ relationship to Palestine. It also gestures towards baṣīra, or insight: a seeing steeped in experience and research.

Conceived for Palestinian artists and cultural practitioners in the diaspora, the programme brings relationships to Palestine formed through memory, language, stories, images and everyday cultural practices into contact with the experience of Palestine firsthand.

Through research, artistic production and public engagement, residents are invited to explore the relationship between imagined and lived experiences of Palestine.

What the Residency Offers

The fully funded programme provides:

• Travel, accommodation and production costs, plus a monthly stipend.
• Equipped studio space and support from the Palestinian Museum.
• Access to the Museum’s archives, exhibitions, collections and cultural networks.
• Field visits tailored to each resident’s practice and project.
• Opportunities for public engagement through talks, workshops and open studios.
• Documentation of the residency and work developed.
• A final public presentation.

The residency does not cover costs for accompanying guests or personal travel outside the programme.

Areas of Focus

BASAR welcomes proposals engaging with one or more of the following:

• Archives and cultural memory.
• Material culture and traces of history in place.
• Landscape, erasure and steadfastness.
• Everyday life and cultural practices.
• Identity, diaspora, exile, refugeehood and forced displacement.

Eligibility

The residency is open to Palestinian artists, curators, arts educators and other cultural practitioners in the diaspora working in visual arts, research-led practice or interdisciplinary fields.

Applicants should demonstrate:

• A strong artistic, curatorial, educational or research-led practice.
• Understanding of and sensitivity to the political and cultural context in Palestine.
• Openness to public engagement and collaborative work with cultural organisations and practitioners in Palestine.
• Commitment to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) guidelines.

Image: Courtesy of the Palestinian Museum.