The Q&A event, Stories from the Satellite Dish, took place at Mimosa House on 31st May, to celebrate Dalia al-Dujaili’s newly published memoir Babylon, Albion and explore its crossovers with Sarah Al-Sarraj’s Limbs of a Lunar Disc. Chaired by Jessica El Mal, the conversation  spanned themes of migration, ecology and spirituality, discussing how stories echo across time, mediums, and diasporas.

Both works grapple with the delicate balance of portraying Arab landscapes through beauty and the sublime, and the artists both discussed the conflicts embedded in doing so without tipping into romanticising or orientalising tropes. From  knowledge dispossession, the literal erasure of the Marsh Arabs knowledge and way of life, to generational justice, the talk offered an eco-critical lens on climate change, ultimately questioning whether we could still pass down a land worth inheriting.

Dalia al-Dujaili is an Iraqi-British writer, editor and producer based in London. She is the online editor of The British Journal of Photography. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Dazed, GQ, WePresent, Aperture, Atmos, It’s Nice That, Elephant Art and more. She is the founder of The Road to Nowhere Magazine and in 2023 she was the Producer of Refugee Week.

Sarah Al-Sarraj is a visual artist and cultural worker. Her practice centres on worldbuilding as a creative and critical process, where painting and immersive technologies are understood as portals to other worlds. Her comic ‘Sinkhole’ was selected for New Contemporaries 2022, and in 2023, she was awarded a grant from the Arts Council to develop her use of new media. Alongside her artistic practice, she currently serves on the board of the Inclusive Mosque Initiative, an intersectional feminist mosque.

Limbs of the Lunar Disc is co-commissioned by the Arab British Centre and Shubbak Festival, featuring works commissioned by the Mechatronic Library. Curated by Jessica El Mal as part of As We Are, Might Have Been and Could Be, and hosted at Mimosa House. Supported by Freelands Foundation and Arts Council England.