The Guardian published Safi Bugel's feature Rebellious robes and stitches from the civil war: the radical story of Palestinian embroidery on 17 July 2023. The article reviews Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, curated by Rachel Dedman, which traces embroidery from rural life in Gaza to contemporary art. Bugel opens with a worn, patched dress made for everyday wear by a rural woman from the Gaza region in the 1930s, and explains how the exhibition reads embroidered garments as expressions of class, gender and sociopolitical change.
Among the contemporary artists in the show is Aya Haidar, who reimagines her family history through vibrant threads and fabric on embroidery hoops. Inspired by the stories her mother and grandmother shared while teaching her to stitch, the series pieces together their experiences of surviving Lebanon's civil war: in one hoop, family members wear pots and pans as makeshift helmets in the living room; in another they shelter under a bed frame. Haidar tells the paper that while she addresses conflict and migration, the work is about "pinpointing those smaller stories that humanize a situation." She also passed the stories and stitching on to her own children as she made the hoops.
Aya Haidar is a London based artist whose practice is closely engaged with socially situated and institutional projects, with presentations at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Somerset House, the Whitworth and Kettle's Yard. She is represented by Tabari.
