artist statement
My studio practice oscillates at the intersection of archiving and making, using materials across the spectrum of textiles, printmaking, bookmaking, and papermaking to investigate the shared language of textiles and storytelling, Lebanese culinary traditions, posthumanist folklore, and webs of lineage and longing.
Making paper, gathering dyestuff, weaving textiles, sewing books, and printing etchings—the ways in which I work are inextricably linked to traditional processes and multi-sensory rituals.
This work is built upon many intrinsic associations that link textiles with print: as protest, precious, portable, shelter, mapping, and as a catalyst for investigating history and connecting with my familial past. I am interested in emphasizing the tactility and history of materials, researching their implications in order to make thoughtful decisions about how to shape, display, and write about them. During times when I get stuck or hung up on language, speaking through cloth and works on paper offers an alternative venue for communicating and connecting with others.
My work emerges from lines drawn between textures, (text)iles, rituals, and family histories. The ways that objects feel against skin, how they smell, their weight, the material histories they hold, are just as important as the stories that my work tells through images or text.