Literature

Aya Haidar's Shattered series takes as its source images captured in the immediate aftermath of the Beirut port explosion of 4 August 2020. The photographs document the rooms of ordinary domestic life, a kitchen, a sitting room, a parked car, a bedroom, caught at the moment they were undone. Across each image, every shard of broken glass is embroidered in dense, multi-coloured thread. The labour is forensic and tender at once, a counting of every piece that broke a life, and a softening of the jagged edge with stitch and colour. The thread inserts hope and life against a dark backdrop, an act of mending that does not pretend to make whole.