As a second generation Palestinian American, I have been witness to how immigrant communities in the United States and the West function as cultural time capsules; spaces where traditions brought from home in the mid to late 20th century remain preserved in ways that often do not evolve alongside contemporary cultural shifts in their places of origin.

Because immigrant communities tend to exist in cultural bubbles, traditions can remain frozen in time or take on new meanings once displaced from their original geographic contexts, especially as communities evolve over decades. My own community, originating from Beit Hanina, Palestine and immigrating to the US, and primarily to Brooklyn, NY nearly 60 years ago, illustrates this exact dynamic. The series’ title is a play on the experience of diaspora communities creating their own villages in the midst of their new regions and locations, "qadhat" the arabic term for district, is colloquially used to explain the general geopolitical location of a person's village back in Palestine.

The series explores the questions of what is the line between practiced culture versus performative expression and can we be at the risk of orientalizing our own traditions? Ultimately, the series investigates identity and the ways immigrant communities negotiate past and present, how cultural expression becomes a site of continuity, insistence, and pride while remaining authentic to our present day. This series ultimately becomes a marriage of my experiences as a Palestinian native New Yorker and my work as a photographer in the wedding industry.