Dubai-based Palestinian-Canadian artist Samar Hejazi has been commissioned to create mirrored sculptural mannequin heads for the Costume Institute's Spring 2026 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, opening alongside the Met Gala. Hejazi's reflective works, designed for the exhibition "Costume Art," aim to collapse the distance between viewer and object, creating moments of surprise and questioning about identity, perception, and belonging.
This commission matters because it places an Arab and Palestinian artist on one of the most visible global cultural stages, at a time when representation in major institutions is under scrutiny. Hejazi sees her presence not as an exception but as a step toward normalizing Arab creatives within contemporary culture, using her work to challenge how meaning is formed through memory, cultural inheritance, and perception.