MOJEH published On Resistance, Feminism And Preserving Culture Through Craft, a profile of Aya Haidar by Amia Hasheel, on 11 November 2024. It opens with a childhood memory: asked what her mother did, Haidar answered that she was "just a housewife," and was scolded by her father. Now a mother of four, the London based Lebanese artist tells the magazine that society attributes nothingness to the most important role, the one that shapes the next generation.
Hasheel traces her love of textiles to her grandmother's house, where they cooked, sewed, knitted and mended together, and to studies at the Slade School of Fine Art. The profile notes that earlier that year Tabari displayed Haidar's embroidery Final Goodbye, a woman embracing the shrouded body of a child killed in conflict, reflecting the situation in Gaza. It discusses Safe Spaces, embroidery hoops based on her family's memories of Lebanon's civil war, shown in Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery at Kettle's Yard, curated by Rachel Dedman, and a line from that exhibition that resonated with her: "Men fight with swords, women fight with the needle." It also revisits Highly Strung, 365 domestic items embroidered at night with the unpaid tasks of motherhood, which she describes as her most passive aggressive body of work.
Aya Haidar's socially engaged practice turns testimony, labour and memory into stitched work, and the magazine notes she would return to the UAE with Tabari for Art Dubai. She is represented by Tabari.
