Steve Sabella at SEP Berlin: Elsewhere, Everland, and the Freedom to Imagine

In our SEP Berlin store in Prenzlauer Berg, craft and contemporary art meet for a rare moment: we are hosting an exclusive pop-up with internationally acclaimed artist and author Steve Sabella.

Born in Jerusalem and based in Berlin, Sabella transforms photography into layered visual worlds that question how we remember, where we belong, and how we imagine freedom. His works are part of major collections including the Institut du Monde Arabe Museum (Paris), the British Museum (London), and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha), and have been shown across Europe, the Middle East, and the United States.

At SEP Berlin, we are honoured to present and sell a curated selection of his Elsewhere and Everland series – six works that resonate deeply with our own universe of heritage, movement, and identity.

Elsewhere: Reframing Landscapes, Reframing Memory

In Elsewhere, Sabella splices and reconfigures historic imagery into new, cinematic scenes through the historic photochrome collage technique. Rivers, boats, ancient streets and city walls are collaged into compositions that feel at once familiar and disorienting – like remembering a place you’ve never quite stood in, but somehow carry within you.

These works echo the feeling many of us know too well: being physically in one city, yet mentally inhabiting another time, another landscape, another version of home. They invite us to ask: when everything shifts, where does “elsewhere” begin and where does it end?

Everland: A Garden That Refuses to Fade

If Elsewhere explores the vertigo of displacement, Everland is an explosion of persistence. These works bloom with dense, intricate floral patterns, almost embroidered with colour. Layer upon layer of blossoms, leaves and pixel-like fragments create an overwhelming field of life that refuses to be muted.

For us at SEP, Everland speaks the same language as our embroidered keffiyehs and textiles: a living archive of symbols, patterns and gestures that carry stories across generations, as the pieces are created from Palestinian embroidery photographed from historic costumes. Sabella’s collages feel like digital gardens of resistance – spaces where memory regenerates itself, stubbornly and beautifully.

Art, Imagination and the SEP Universe

Steve Sabella is also the author of the award-winning Palestinian memoir The Parachute Paradox – Decolonizing the Imagination and the creator of The Artist’s CURSE  and The Artist’s CURE, a philosophy and course on navigating the creative life, which he currently teaches at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin.

At SEP, we believe that what you wear – and what you surround yourself with – should reflect what you stand for. Sabella’s work transforms fragments of history into new worlds of possibility, reminding us that imagination remains humanity’s most powerful form of freedom. His collages are visual cousins to our hand-embroidered textiles: both are built stitch by stitch, layer by layer, out of stories that refuse to disappear.

This pop-up at SEP Berlin is an invitation to experience that dialogue up close: between fabric and photograph, between Berlin and Jerusalem, between heritage and the future.

Visit the Pop-Up at SEP Berlin

The works from Elsewhere and Everland are available in a limited edition of 6 exclusively through SEP Berlin for the duration of the pop-up.

Location:
SEP Berlin
Choriner Straße 59
10435 Berlin – Prenzlauer Berg

For availability, prices or private viewings, please contact our Berlin team or visit us in store.

Discover more about Steve Sabella’s practice at www.stevesabella.space.

Note for collectors. The Editions available at SEP Berlin are:

— Everland VII  — Edition 5/6 (last 2 available)
— Everland IX  — Edition 4/6 
— Everland VIII  — Edition 4/6 
— Elsewhere II  — Edition 2/6
— Elsewhere VII  — Edition 2/6
— Elsewhere XII  — Edition 1/6

Function. Craft. Identity. No noise.