Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery
Curated by Rachel Dedman
Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, 8 July – 29 October 2023
The Whitworth, Manchester, 23 November 2023 – Spring 2024
Material Power explores the historical life and contemporary significance of Palestinian embroidery, unfolding an intimate history of Palestine through the narratives told by clothing. It addresses the ways in which embroidery is intimately connected to shifting gender norms, labour practices and socio-economic conditions in the Middle East over the last hundred years, as it traces embroidery’s shift from an historic, individual practice, associated with self-expression, to a cultural artefact and marker of nationalism.
PEER, London
May - October 2023
Across five months, I will work with
Hackney Circle members to explore themes in Peer’s exhibition programme, my own practice and participants’ interests.
Workshops are flexible to allow for participants interests to guide and inform the programme.
The first workshop will include an introduction to Aya’s work including the opportunity create your own textile-based work, a discussion about future workshops and introduction to Peer’s programme.
Visit PEER here
BOOK PUBLICATION
Highly Strung
2022
Upcoming launch of 365 limited edition copies in large format of my latest large scale installation Highly Strung. For more information or to reserve your copy, please contact a member of the Athr team.
Highly Strung is a durational body of work, which explores notions of motherhood, domesticity, and the invisibility of a woman’s labour. Produced over 365 days, Haidar made a record of an act of invisible labour she accomplished, one for every day of the year.
These mundane acts are the sum of her every day, as mother, wife, caregiver, and woman.
Each act has been carefully embroidered onto an item found within the home and presented, literally, Highly Strung on washing lines.
Haidar repositions the domestic space as a political site exploring its relationship to artistic work, repetition, care work, paid/unpaid, cleaning, parenting, and the working body.