UCL's Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences published Crafting Space to Talk, an interview with Aya Haidar conducted by Ana Charriere Alvarez de Ron, a second-year BA History of Art student, for the department's equality, diversity and inclusion series. The conversation covers the artist's socially engaged, embroidery-based practice and its concern with displacement, labour, womanhood and memory.
The interview discusses Highly Strung (2020), the 360-piece embroidered series made one stitched panel a day for a year and acquired in its entirety by Guggenheim Abu Dhabi for its foyer, and In Witness Whereof (2018), commissioned for the 21,39 art fair in Jeddah, in which Haidar negotiated fair pay with a Pakistani craftsperson who then hand-embroidered their agreed contract onto a panel over three metres long, its borders showing overlaid maps of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It also covers her 2017-18 residency with Deveron Projects in Huntly, Scotland, working with anthropologist Marc Higgin and 120 Syrian refugees and local residents, which led to the N.11 Café.
The interview closes on Aya Haidar's then-forthcoming solo exhibition Battlegrounds at Tabari Artspace, opening in February to coincide with Art Dubai, which she describes as new work continuing her examination of womanhood and feminism.
