Inside the Box
Archival Room Installation
Inside the Box unfolds inside my personal bedroom in Salfit, Palestine—a room that holds two lives at once: the private space where I sleep, and the studio where I create.
The installation takes place inside this single room, where everyday outside sounds enter through the window and activate memories that shape the work.
Outside Sounds as Triggers
From dawn until sunset, the room receives a continuous stream of sonic fragments from the neighborhood:
birds at sunrise, the school anthem, a passing truck, the cheese seller’s call, the rustle of thyme being cut outside, construction sounds, phone calls, and the calls to prayer.
Each sound becomes a trigger—a portal that opens a specific layer of my family’s archive.
Scanning the Archive Inside the Room
Every archival material used in the project was digitally scanned inside this bedroom–studio, using the scanner placed on my desk.
While scanning, sunlight slowly moved across the room, shifting the shadows, illuminating corners, and inserting time directly into the images.
The scans therefore carry not only the textures of the objects, but also the physical atmosphere of the room:
the drifting daylight, the rhythm of outside sounds, and the changing temperature of the day.
A glimpse inside the evolving space — moments captured where time, memory, and architecture quietly merge. Part of the ongoing work Inside the Box.
Family Histories, Land, and Return
The sounds lead to archival objects that reflect a wider family narrative:
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Time as Structure
The installation follows the structure of the day.
Each hour corresponds to a specific outside sound, and each sound corresponds to a scanned material.
Together they form a circular timeline—like a clock—where sound, memory, light, and scanned objects move together.
Installation at OPEN SOLITUDE (2025)
In 2025, an early iteration of Inside the Box was presented during OPEN SOLITUDE at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. The work was installed in the sleeping area of my private studio, on the mezzanine level. Visitors were not allowed to enter the room; instead, they looked at the installation from outside, through the opening and railing. Inside, my bed, personal objects and dried plants were arranged around a large projection of my private bedroom-studio in Salfit, which covered the wall and spilled over the blanket and pillows. Next to the suitcases placed in the room, I scattered dried za’atar from my family home – a herb that appears in my scanned archive and that, for us as Palestinians, is not just a plant but something that travels with us. Its smell subtly filled the space and deepened the sense of distance, memory, and return. The archival video and sound were concentrated in this intimate sleeping corner, so the room could be seen but not accessed, keeping a clear boundary between inside and outside.
A Bedroom as Living Archive
Inside the Box transforms a personal bedroom into a living archive—a site where:
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sound becomes memory,
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memory becomes image,
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and the physical room becomes part of the archival material itself.
It is an intimate mapping of how a family remembers, builds, and returns;
how architecture holds emotion;
and how a room can contain generations.
A diagram mapping the outside sounds throughout the day and the corresponding archival materials scanned inside the bedroom–studio.
Inside the Box, installation view, OPEN SOLITUDE, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, 2025.
Project history
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Inside the Box first emerged during the Tadafuq/Flow programme (January–March 2025), developed under the mentorship of Shuruq Harb and with the support of the Spanish Consulate, as a reflection on my family bedroom in Salfit as an intimate archive. The project then grew into an installation that layers video, sound and the architecture of the room, with an early iteration presented in November 2025 at OPEN SOLITUDE, Akademie Schloss Solitude, in Stuttgart.
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Concept & Direction: Hiba G. Isleem
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Location: Salfit, Palestine / Stuttgart, Germany
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Status: Work in Progress (2025)