The Art of Belonging
Hana Assafiri is a Melbourne-based contemporary artist, author and social advocate. She paints, sculpts in woven wire, gives everyday objects new life through colour, and creates wearable art on silk. Her work is shaped by questions of belonging: what we inherit and what we release, how we love, and the freedom to be ourselves. Culture, gender and memory run through it. In 1998 she founded the Moroccan Soup Bar in Melbourne, a restaurant that has employed and supported women, and she speaks widely on women's rights and racism. She is the author of the memoir Hana: The Audacity to Be Free and the Moroccan Soup Bar cookbook. Her art invites you to take your time.
Still
Acrylic on canvas, 105 cm x 125 cm, 2025
Exhibition: Still, we love
Availability: Private collection
Still
After devastation comes
stillness and silence.
When bombs fall.
When dignity is denied.
When truth is contested.
When cruelty begins to feel ordinary.
And still, flowers emerge.
Not large.
Not triumphant.
Tiny.
Emerging anyway.
Not because suffering is beautiful.
Because life insists, even in weather we cannot choose.
Still, we love.