From 14 November 2026, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam will be presenting new work by the Palestinian artist Susanne Khalil Yusef (1984), who lives in the Netherlands. On 10 October 2023, the museum acquired in Yusef’s work نعيش (We Want to Live) for its collection. With this statement, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam was one of the first museums in the Netherlands to speak out against the immense injustice done to the Palestinians, which has been going on for decades. Yusef has now been commissioned to create a new work for one of the museum’s attic spaces. To realise this, she is collaborating with the sizeable Palestinian community in the region of Schiedam and Vlaardingen.
In 2021, Susanne Khalil Yusef had a blown glass version made of an Arab text in the handwriting of a good friend of hers from Gaza. The words mean ‘We want to live’, a phrase frequently exchanged between Yusef and her friends whenever they are discussing the atrocities the Palestinians are being subjected to, and which have been going on for decades. Susanne Khalil Yusef’s own family fled the city of Jaffa during the 1948 Nakba. Through her work she aims to shed light on the position of Palestinians who are scattered around the world and live in a wide variety of multi-generational diasporic communities. The sculpture ‘We Want to Live’ is currently hanging in the stairwell of Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. Unfortunately, the work is just as relevant today as it was two years ago. Yusef’s blown glass words بدنا نعيش (We Want to Live) remind us of the importance to not look away. All human beings have the right to live their lives.
For her 2026 attic presentation, Yusef will be creating a new work, inspired by conversations and co-creation sessions she engaged in with members of the Palestinian community in the region of Schiedam and Vlaardingen. The Palestinian community in this region was able to become this large because in 1963 fifty migrant workers from the city of Nablus, on the West Bank, were hired to work at the Romi margarine factory in Vlaardingen. In 1967, the Six-Day War led to the Israeli occupation of their land, which meant they were unable to return to their homes. Out of necessity, the workers then brought their families to the Netherlands. This led to the development of a Palestinian community in Vlaardingen and its surroundings; a community that still lives there and today consists of multiple generations.
Susanne Khalil Yusef’s project primarily focuses on the following questions: What does it mean to be a third-generation Palestinian living in the Netherlands? How is collective memory constructed? And how can you live with a history that never really seems to become history?
This exhibition is part of ArtBase, a pilot programme exploring the importance of the visual arts in various Dutch regional areas. ArtBase is made possible by the Mondriaan Fund.
Image: Susanne Khalil Yusef, We Want to Live, 2021, neon, collection of Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, (purchased with support from the Mondriaan Fund). Photograph: Aad Hoogendoorn.