Camden Art Centre's website carries a listing for Hopscotch Women's Centre with Aya Haidar, a participatory embroidery project the artist led with women from the Hopscotch Women's Centre as part of the gallery's public programme, running from 19 to 26 November 2022. No individual byline is credited; the text is presented as institutional copy from the centre.
The project centred on antimacassars, the small embroidered textiles traditionally laid over the backs and arms of chairs, which Haidar and the participants worked on through weekly collective stitching sessions and conversation. Personal narratives around home, migration and family were embroidered onto the pieces, with the sessions also engaging with participants' experiences of societal, racial and gender inequity. The finished antimacassars were then shown publicly, giving visitors access to the stitched testimony.
The workshop is characteristic of how Aya Haidar works outside the gallery as well as within it, using hand embroidery on found or everyday objects to draw out otherwise unrecorded stories of loss, migration and domestic labour, a method that also underpins pieces such as Highly Strung and Soleless.
