The Victoria and Albert Museum's collection catalogue records Safe Space, a series of embroideries on wooden hoops made by Aya Haidar in 2023 and now held in the museum's permanent collection. The object record describes the series as documenting the artist's mother's memories of growing up in Lebanon during the civil war of 1975 to 1990, and the simple steps her family took to stay safe.
The V&A text walks through the individual scenes. In Stray Bullets, the artist's grandmother sits at home wearing a cooking pot on her head as protection from bullets coming through the window. In Sniper, mother and child go to the market with pan lids over their clothes as makeshift protective vests, and in Door Frame they shelter in a threshold as cracks appear in the walls. Bedtime shows the family sleeping beneath their bed frames in case the roof gives way during an air raid, and Shattered recalls the grandmother's frustration at clearing glass from broken windows off her furniture.
Aya Haidar is a London based artist with Lebanese heritage whose practice turns domestic testimony, labour and memory into stitched and socially engaged work. Her embroidered series Highly Strung was acquired by the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and she has worked with Kettle's Yard, the Whitworth and the V&A's Stitching Borders programme. The entry of Safe Space into the V&A collection places this family history within a national museum. Aya Haidar is represented by Tabari.
