In yesterday's post we looked at an artist who may inspire us how to create works that preserve our memories. Let's continue the thread via the work of another artist who employed a craft to process memories of violence, Majd Abdel Hamid.
Born in Damascus in 1988, Majd Abdel Hamid works between Ramallah and Beirut and employs a wide variety of media in his work, including embroidery, video, installation and sculpture and often tackles complex themes such as national identity and trauma.
Among his most interesting works there is the series entitled "Tadmur Prison" (2018), inspired by Mustafa Khalifa's book "The Shell: Memoirs of a Hidden Observer". In the latter its author describes the horrors of the Tadmur desert prison in Palmyra, where he spent a decade before being transferred to a different state security jail.
Many entered this prison, but very few left it, then, in 2015, ISIS destroyed it. The news of the destruction of this place did not resonate that much in the international news, but the loss of this brutal place linked with Assad's regime represents for Syrians a negation of memory for those ones who died within its walls.
Hamid created his "Tadmur" series as a way to remember those who never left the prison and to provide a way to process pain for those who survived its horrors.
Moving from the embroidery patterns Palestinians passed down from generation to generation and paying homage to traditions undertaken by women, Hamid embroidered the outline of the prison's architectural blueprint on different pieces of fabric and objects that are usually displayed in exhibitions accompanied with an audio recording of a monologue.
The outline is meticulously repeated on kitchen towels, squares cut out of colourful scarves or random fabric pieces and small objects like a tea sieve. Dimensions may change, but the horror remains through that constant repetition.
There are quite a few parallelisms and juxtapositions in these pieces: the beauty of the craft has been turned into a way to chronicle violence and torture; domestic objects are transformed into sinister maps, while the unseen parts of the embroidered pieces, the back of the cloths with their tangled threads, are conceived as metaphors for the bowels of the prison where lives were destroyed.
These meditative works invite us to consider the power of crafts to chronicle modern events, but they are also an invitation at embracing a folk art as a way to slow down, decelerate things and process difficult, painful and traumatic memories.
Another poignant story that reflects the power of embroidery. Thank you.
Posted by: Kmaustral | July 04, 2020 at 02:43 AM