To Remember is to Resist | ICD Brookfield Place, Dubai | 2025

This poster, titled 'To Remember is to Resist,' is anchored in the phrase "على هذه الأرض ما يستحق الحياة" (On this land, there is that which deserves life) by Mahmoud Darwish — a poetic declaration that memory, land, and life are inseparable. Through mirrored typographic trees growing out of a globe, this belief is translated into form: each branch is made of Arabic letters and words, spelling out fragments of survival, resistance, and rootedness. Words, "الأرض" (al-ard, land) and "الحياة" (al-hayat, life) are highlighted as recurring anchors, both visual and conceptual. This work is inspired by a personal series of photographs I take during my wanderings in my home cities — where I often find trees pushing through stone, blooming defiantly through fences. In this poster, the tree becomes a symbol of what is often overlooked: the quiet, insistent presence of life within systems of confinement. Design here becomes a way of bearing witness, of reimagining resistance through language and nature, and of contributing to a lineage of visual solidarity where care, remembrance, and rootedness are acts of dissent.

TASMEEM POSTER COMPETITION