Resilience صمود

Description: This piece was made for the many populations who, at the time of making, are being subjected to ethnic cleansing and cultural erasure, though in a broader sense resilience is required from all of us to counter the erosion of human values we see taking place in real time.

Resilience is not survival. To survive is to merely continue existing, but resilience implies preserving the sense of self that makes life worth living. Resilience involves culture, morality, arts, food traditions. In the face of destruction, creation is the ultimate act of resistance.

My choice of stitching for this piece is unsurprisingly inspired by the Palestinian tradition of tatreez (cross-stich embroidery), which in its deep connection to identity has long become, not merely a symbol for, but an act of resilience. It was also practiced in Lebanon at least as early as the medieval period, so there's a personal connection there (though Lebanese tatreez fell out of use so long ago hardly anything is known about it).

However, this piece was really lead by an impulse to dye thread and work stitches on paper, as the ideas of "thread", "unraveling", weaving together", "threadbare" and other textile-based metaphors have been on my mind.

To create this, I dyed 3-ply silk thread with madder root, and used a modifier to achieve the darker brown. As I had only a limited quantity of red silk to work with, I only darkened short lengths as they were needed, and as a result the shades are not identical. The result is strikingly reminiscent of lived-in and loved textiles that are repaired and re-embroidered over time, so that they show fresh colours alongside older and faded ones.

Materials: Como silk thread, hand-dyed with madder root1, stitched on paper.

Size: 50x50 cm.

Completed: 9 August 2024.

Studio price: £1,200 in response to this email, plus shipping.

Here’s a minute of stitching to illustrate how prodigiously laborious the process is:

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