It was in 2011, during the Arab uprisings, that Massoud Hayoun first started thinking about “what ‘Arabness’ was all about.” Born in LA, and raised by North African Jewish grandparents, the artist and journalist has since written a book based on conversations with other Arab Americans, and more recently he’s been unraveling personal and collective Arab histories in poignant shades of blue through his paintings. He tells Dalia Al-Dujaili how he wants to show the connective tissue that joins people together across borders, and to illustrate what a more just future might look like in the process.