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.
Susanne Khalil Yusef, We Want to Live, 2021, neon, collection of Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, (purchased with support from the Mondriaan Fund). Photo Aad Hoogendoorn.
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.
Palestinian community in Vlaardingen & Schiedam
The Palestinian community in this region is relatively large because, in 1963, fifty migrant workers from Nablus in the West Bank came to Vlaardingen to work at the Romi margarine factory. When the Six-Day War broke out in 1967 and their homeland was occupied by Israel, they could no longer return home. Forced to stay, the workers brought their families to the Netherlands. This led to the formation of a Palestinian community in Vlaardingen and the surrounding area, which still exists today and now spans several generations.
Co-creation session at Museum Vlaardingen, 2026, photo by Ahmad (Photo’s Master Studio)
In preparation for this exhibition, Museum Vlaardingen and Stedelijk Museum Schiedam invited Palestinians from Vlaardingen, Schiedam, and the surrounding region to participate in a series of co-creation sessions with Susanne Khalil Yusef. Together, they explored questions such as: what does it mean to be Palestinian in the Netherlands? How is collective memory formed? And how do you live with a history that never seems to become history?
The sessions took place between January and April 2026. The conversations and shared experiences form an important source of inspiration for Susanne Khalil Yusef’s solo exhibition at Stedelijk Museum Schiedam, as well as for a historical exhibition at Museum Vlaardingen.
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.