is an Assyrian-Chaldean artist working at the intersection of contemporary histories and ancient futures.

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Selected Works

Shimane'd Bakhtathe (2026)

Sara Jajou, Shimane’d Bakhtathe, 2026, cotton, 500 x 500mm (left) and 470 x 460mm (right), photo: Sara Jajou.
Read more about this ongoing work in an upcoming feature on Garland Magazine.

Shimane ‘d Bakthathe (meaning names of women) is an ongoing series of crocheted cotton tapestries, each embedded with the name of a woman in my lineage. It is a slow archive honouring the Assyrian women in my lineage by remembering and knowing their names. Often, women are remembered for their maternal roles in the family, and called ‘mother, daughter, grandmother…’ etc. In the process, their names become lost. These tapestries emerge non-chronologically as I learn how to write their names in my mother-tongue, Assyrian, and take form in what I consider to be my Dada’s medium, filet crochet.

Dada, my grandmother Asmar, learned how to crochet and knit at a young age in her hometown Alqosh, in Bet Nahrain. Despite Alqosh being an ancient town, I only recently learned that our family has only lived there for 5 generations after escaping the Armenian, Assyrian, Greek and Yezidi Genocide (1915-1923) by the Ottoman Empire. Dada tells me the story of her great-great-grandmother, also named Asmar, who fled from her Assyrian village in Turkey to Alqosh, while her relatives resettled and named the Assyrian village now known as Sharafiya. Asmar’s baby sister, only a few days old, was left behind in a woven reed basket - both her life and name unknown.

Sara Jajou, Sera, 2026, cotton, 500 x 500mm, photo: Sara Jajou.

Sara Jajou, Asmar Benyamen Oraha, 2026, cotton, 470 x 460mm, photo: Sara Jajou.