in love in blood - بالحبّ بالدّم
The starting point of the work is a list of the words of love compiled by Ibn Qayyim El Jawziyya, who was born in Damascus in 1292. As I am collecting words, language-related sources, and lexicons, the list fo the words of love stood out to me: it has more than 50 words of love, whereby love, passion, nostalgia, craziness, and blood all belong to that compilation in the arabic language. Fatimah el Mernissi has translated 50 of those words to French, and I worked with professional translators to translate the list to English and Dutch.
On the wall of the museum, I re-wrote in charcoal, that list of the words of love in Arabic, and in the relative other languages I so far have, and furthermore, I spent a day each week, for over twelve weeks with women who mostly come from migrant origins in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, and I shared with them the list. Together with them, we discussed those notions, and they selected their favourtie word in the list. They wrote it on a textile, and I lightly intervened sometimes by helping to add a drawing or write a word if needed, or finalise the composition. After that, they were busy embroidering each her own and favourite word of love. So for about two months, each tuesday, we met at Stichting Ik Wil in Eindhoven, the association that helped me coordinte our meetings and that generously hosted this workshop.
When the ladies were finished, I picked textile from the market in Eindhoven, and together with the ladies, we added to each of their embroideries their favourite textile around the work. After that, I hung these works facing my wall with the list of words I hand-wrote in charcoal in Eindhoven, on a semi-circular rod, and the hanging of the embroideries was double sided, to allow show most of the works we made.
Today as we go through Corona times, and it’s as if people are not allowed to love each other anymore, because of social distancing and governemental controls over families, extended families and their moves, this list of the words of love, is even more valid and important to me.
I hope in the future to continue working on the words of love with new diverse relevant groups.
The photos attached are from the first iteration of the work, when I was via the Van Abbe Musuem, able to produce this work for the first time, and in collaboration with Stichting Ik Wil in Eindhoven, in late 2019.
The group of embroiderers in this itertion of the work are: Najia Seyma, Mahan, Freija Beijne, Halima Ahmed, Yordanos- Kebede, Sumeyye Karadeniz, Sayadiy Tarrah, Hilal Ata, Bouchra, Sofia el Haddad, Niki Smeets, and Caya van Nuenen.
Special thanks to the team of curators and facilitators as well as assistants who helped me finalise the work for the van Abbe Museum – Positions V Exhibition:
Nick Aikens, curator of the exhibition, Eveline Scheltinga assistant curator of the exhibition, and the rest of the team who worked with me for realising this work:
Hilde de Bruin, Niki Smeets and specially Caya van Nuenen who was present in every session we embroidered, and also added her own embroidery to the work.