Rafah and Beit Lahia once had a thriving flower industry, exporting millions of carnations and chrysanthemums to Dutch markets. But years of delays and seizures at Israeli checkpoints left them wilting at the border, & the trade nearly vanished.

In Cut Flowers, Younis returns to a 2004 scene from that history, when boys boarded a bus and handed carnations to Hajj pilgrims stranded before their journey. She speculates that those flowers were carried across borders, tucked into luggage, until they finally found familiarity in Jeddah’s soil. At the Islamic Biennale, she fills a greenhouse with Gazan flowers hoping this year’s pilgrims will carry them back home; a botanical act that attunes us to regional intimacy, and marks how our identities are entangled beyond borders.