Bound: Textiles Between Loss and Repair is a group exhibition featuring five creatives: Dana Awartani, Jumana Manna, Hana Miletić, Dala Nasser, and Khalil Rabah. It delves into the nurturing and healing properties of fabric, examining how textiles play a role in mourning, care, and restoration. Curated by Murtaza Vali, the exhibition is on view at Green Art Gallery and will run through 2 November 2024.
Saudi artist Dana Awartani presents Let me mend your broken bones 16 (2023), an art piece comprising several silk panels naturally dyed in Kerala with medicinal herbs used in South Asian and Arab cultures. The work highlights the destruction of architectural heritage across West Asia and beyond. Awartani tears each panel to recreate the outlines of damage done to real buildings identified in accompanying text. The fabric’s tears are then mended with matching thread by master darners in Mumbai, symbolising the potential for healing in response to the ideological erasure of cultural heritage.

Palestinian artist Jumana Manna displays Theory of an Unfinished Building (River) (2022), a wall-mounted patchwork of worn fabric stretched over a wooden frame. It is part of her ongoing series of works elevating overlooked materials and objects which “expose, transform, and bind us to one another and the spaces we cohabit.” The artist collected the gauze-like “dust catchers” from different construction sites, where they are used to contain airborne debris. This found material speaks to the neoliberal forces of urban development and gentrification.

Zagreb-born artist Hana Miletić’s ongoing Materials series (2015-) consists of hand-woven textile pieces replicating makeshift repairs she observes in the city, such as plastic sheets covering broken car windows or loops of caution tape. Miletić transforms synthetic materials like adhesive tape and plastic into the organic texture of woven fabric resembling bandages. This material transition emphasises what or who the original reparative gestures are directed towards to include the invisible bodies that inhabit and maintain urban spaces.
Lebanese artist Dala Nasser’s paintings Misk 1 (2023) and Misk 2 (2023) derive their name from the Arabic word for mastic, a resin harvested from trees native to the Greek island of Chios, where the pieces were created. Used for centuries in medicine and food, the material reflects histories of trade and movement. Nasser’s works combine fabric with charcoal rubbings of mastic trees and pigment made from lapis lazuli, invoking themes of healing and mourning. The rubbings recall the Shroud of Turin, while the use of ultramarine, associated with the Virgin Mary, symbolises both spirituality and the sea, mourning refugees fleeing hardship in West Asia.

Palestinian artist Khalil Rabah’s Tattoo (1996) is a modified keffiyeh, where the traditional black threads have been removed and gathered in a pile beneath the hanging scarf. This piece speaks to collective resilience in the face of attempts at erasure, functioning both as a memorial to loss and a testament to survival. Rabah transforms the keffiyeh, a symbol of Palestinian identity and resistance, into something more universal: a sheet of gauze.
To learn more about Bound: Textiles Between Loss and Repair, please go to the official web page of the show.
In addition, you might be interested in visiting I Wish To Be Happy, I Want To Be Yellow on display at Gallery Isabelle.
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