A Talisman for Land
Graphite and coloured pencil on Khadi paper. MFA Degree Show (2024)
During the pandemic, I found solace in weaving small squares of palm weaves collected from my parents house. I would start with writing on each leaf the story of my childhood home from the palm trees’ viewpoint, then I weave the leaves together. The pale green color of the leaves brought back the deep green color of the room where I grew up. The chaffing I got from it while playing, and its smell when I pretended to sleep. I used the weaves when I worked on the recollections exhibition of monotypes, and then again during my MFA when I used the same method of writing, cutting the lines into strips and then weaving.
For the MFA degree, my intention and medium changed. I wanted to write in the most direct, affordable and comfortable way. It was an urgent cathartic act of documentation. The Arabic language, rooted in information about land, made me realise that a mere act of writing will inevitably produce land. It is not an act of preservation, but a way to seize the distortion this land endures. Words interlocked by the weaves appear like scattered limbs; etymologically poetically connect. Their logic, obscure to many, turns into chants protecting land.