The Voice | Aya Haidar: Art As Resistance

Aya: The exhibition not only presents historic artefacts but also includes video pieces featuring women's stories, detailing the nature of their craftsmanship. In this iteration, contemporary artists like myself, Mona Hatoum, Khalil Rabah, Mounira Al Solh, Samak Bilab Bi Delo, Majd Abdel Hamid and Maeve Brennan respond to the original exhibition, providing a modern perspective on Palestine, craft, and resistance.

Aya: The tradition of Palestinian embroidery holds great importance in preserving the cultural heritage of the region. As encroachment and conflicts threaten this heritage, the exhibition serves as a vital platform to keep this tradition alive, showcasing the diversity and multi-layered nature of Palestinian culture.

Aya: As part of the public program at Kettle's Yard, I’m also collaborating with a local women's refuge. This program aims to explore the theme of home, particularly for women who have experienced domestic violence, substance abuse, or other challenges. Through an eight-week workshop, we’re embroidering on tea towels, using this familiar household item as a canvas for reflecting on home, memory, and aspirations.

Aya: Discussing art as a form of resistance, Material Power is a solid example. In the face of an oppressive force attempting to erase heritage and culture, not limited to Palestine but across the entire region, art emerges as a powerful form of resistance. Crafts, embroidery, and art, in general, become acts of preservation, resisting the erosion of identity and heritage. The act of making, whether it involves stitching, soap-making, or other handicrafts, is intrinsically tied to our identities. The resistance, for me, lies in the very act of creation, pushing back against attempts to chip away at and erode our cultural heritage.

Aya: For me, as an Arab woman, I’m tired of people approaching me with sadness on their faces, saying, ‘Oh, you come from a region of real conflict,’ as if that defines where I'm from. However, I’m Lebanese, and we border Palestine. As a people, we are closely united and intertwined. Beyond the lens of conflict, Arabs have a wealth of defining factors, including our landscape, history, heritage, food, and music. We have contributed significantly to science and have been at the forefront of civilised nations. I take immense pride in these attributes and the aspects of my heritage. 

Aya: As a defining factor, crafts like these embroideries showcase a proud facet of our heritage that has endured. Moreover, it predominantly resides in the hands of women. This, to me, signifies a people who celebrate women, contrary to the secondary status often ascribed to them in Western thought. Our heritage, pride, and history are passed down from woman to woman. Women collectively sew and embroider, exchanging stories, sharing histories, with their children playing at their feet, absorbing the narratives. This cyclical process continues through generations, preserving our heritage in the homes of women. It's a source of pride that I cherish and aim to pass down to my own children. Unfortunately, many Westerners are not aware of these aspects of Middle Eastern culture, a truth applicable to Palestine and all countries in the region.

Aya: There are several works about womanhood, including three giant tapestries, each about two metres by one metre. They playfully represent everyday life, societal expectations of women or mothers, and my own experiences. One depicts a woman in a resistance stance, holding a broom in an apron, exploring the daily chores and societal expectations placed on women. It visually alludes to the painting of the French Revolution with a woman holding the French flag, but here, it's a broom and a cape, offering a playful and colourful take on the signifiers of womanhood. 

Aya: Despite beliefs in feminism and progressiveness, it challenges the idea that a woman's place is still primarily in the home. The second piece portrays a split woman—one side professional-looking and the other with a baby and child, representing the torn reality between work and home life. It questions the illusion of having it all, suggesting that one can't be both without something losing out, challenging societal expectations and notions of feminism.

Aya: Other pieces draw from my own intimate experiences and include embroidery hoops detailing stories of women I've encountered in refugee camps and displaced communities. These stories emphasise everyday resilience and heroism, challenging prevailing narratives. Overall, Battlegrounds explores the multifaceted roles of women as battlegrounds in different aspects of life, from their bodies to the personal and the political.

Aya: My journey into this space began when I was invited to run a charity focusing on displacement and migration. With a background in social policy and NGOs, I found the opportunity to connect with communities on the ground extremely formative for my artistic work.

Aya: Growing up, I spent a lot of time in Lebanon, Jordan and along the Syrian borders but more frequently within a professional capacity working for an NGO for seven years. That was in tandem with my art practice. Both experiences fed into one another. When I was in Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, we were triaging all the refugees that were coming in in truckloads from the Syrian border. I could just see this figure in the distance, hobbling. As this person got closer, I realised it was a woman, she was carrying two children with two children behind her and was really heavily pregnant. And I just remember kind of being amazed that she walked like that. When she got closer, I saw that her feet and all of her, the bottom half was drenched in blood, she was basically in labour. I said ‘you need you need to get seen to’. And she just said, ‘No I need to make sure that my kids are safe’. She held on to make sure that her kids were safe, and carried them, dragging herself through the arid, desert. I just remember that so distinctly. And I think that is for me the embodiment of what motherhood is, this resilience, this strength, this selflessness. These narratives are relayed in my textile works. 

Aya: Motherhood, both as a personal lived experience and a conceptual underpinning of my practice, is tightly woven into the fabric of my art. A profound connection exists between my identity as a mother and my artistic endeavours. It’s a connecting force; when I’ve worked among marginalised and vulnerable women, it’s often motherhood that initially unites us beyond a common gender or ethnicity, for example. When I go to meet these women, some refugees, some survivors of abuse, even before our initial bond is established, our children are already playing with one another. For better or worse, my children have been with me every step of the way on my journey as an artist. It hasn’t been easy; in fact, it’s been extremely difficult to find balance at times, which is why it’s fundamental to me that I collaborate with institutions that advocate for and support women, particularly mothers.

Aya: During the transformative period of new motherhood, I embarked on a residency in Scotland, where, for four months, I was integrating 120 Syrian refugees into a rural town in Aberdeenshire. Even after welcoming my daughter Nia, I continued to work on a project centred around migrant labour. During this project, we gathered around a table, newborn baby in arms, working, sharing, and engaging in conversations about motherhood, domesticity, and womanhood. This fusion of my identity as a mother with the reality of my art is inseparable; they are intertwined at every fibre. Artists don't operate in a vacuum.

Aya: The embroidery itself differs from drawing, which is an instantaneous mark. When you sit down to stitch, it becomes a crucial element. The stitching process is reflective, slow, and intimate. Stitching isn't a mindless or quick task; it's durational. With each passing stitch, there's a reflection on details like the colour of a girl's hair or her size. Every stitch prompts recollection of the experience, relationship, and story, even for narratives like the woman whose trafficker threw her baby overboard. Though not present, my imagination leads me to ponder what a four-month-old looks like, connecting it to thoughts about my own children. It's a crossover of experiences, a marriage of the two, aiming to depict a harrowing story in a piece of that size. Despite the difficulty and responsibility, the detail and openness to interpretation are crucial.

Aya: I believe all good art must create arenas for discussion, emphasising that it has to prompt dialogue and engagement. Regardless of personal preferences for a particular work, its ability to stimulate conversation, thought, and research defines its success in my eyes. Personally, I am drawn to political art, finding little value in mere aesthetic appeal. Art, for me, should hold political or social significance, as it serves as a means to communicate crucial issues. My mind is consistently absorbed in socially and politically engaged matters, and creating art becomes my way of distilling and communicating these reflections.

View Aya Haidar

Material Power, Whitworth Gallery, UK 24 November, 2023 - 7 April, 2024

Battlegrounds, Tabari Artspace, DIFC, Dubai, Spring 2024

Further Reading

Hole and Corner, Family Repairs