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Copy Without Origin contextualizes the installation within a broader framework of artistic and academic research. This wall piece assembles timelines, maps, and texts by Lema Salah, Yannik Güldner, and Marenne Zandstra (Curator of Archaeology, Valkhof Museum). Rather than presenting the original documents, the artist deliberately omitted them from the work. It displays carbon copies on onion paper in standardised US letter format, reminiscent of bureaucratic systems of administration, categorisation, and control. This refers to the inaccessibility of information in the Afghan context, where knowledge is often mediated, fragmented, or obscured. The carbon copy serves as both a tool and a metaphor. It signals transmission while simultaneously erasing its source. Rather than providing a comprehensive account, Copy Without Origin highlights absence itself, implying that cultural memory is not static, but is constantly rewritten through translation, reproduction, and loss.

Within this framework, the contributing researchers explore Afghan cultural heritage by examining issues of displacement, fragmentation, and the production of knowledge. Historian Lema Salah (Radboud University Nijmegen) examined how cultural identity and memory are passed down through the generations via archives, museum collections, oral histories, inherited artefacts, and everyday practices shaped by migration and conflict. In What We Carry Together: Conflict, Memory, and the Transmission of Afghan Cultural Heritage, Lema Salah explores how conflict, displacement, and migration shape Afghan cultural identity. Through personal reflections on growing up in the Afghan diaspora, she shows how heritage is preserved through family traditions, language, music, clothing, storytelling, and inherited objects. The essay highlights the transmission of cultural heritage under conditions of conflict and displacement, including the destruction of cultural heritage and the loss of connection to one's homeland. The essay argues that Afghan cultural heritage survives through intergenerational transmission, community resilience, and everyday practices. Drawing on both personal reflection and scholarly perspectives, Salah emphasizes the importance of preserving memory and identity across generations under conditions of conflict and displacement.