Lebanese visual culture artist Yasmine Dabbous launched her fiber art show at the Hillyer Gallery in Washington DC last Friday Feb. 3. Featuring 12 embroidery artworks and 15 textile adornments, the show discussed the objects that refugees choose to take with them when they leave home under fire.
“This exhibition is about the one or few objects that refugees have the chance to take with them,” Dabbous explained. “These trivial, daily objects acquire a sudden importance as they become the connection between past and future. They become an elusive base for an uncertain tomorrow.”
The artworks include 12 miniature mattresses with various objects hand-embroidered on top of each mattress. “I researched interviews, pictures, diaries and spoke to few refugees here in Beirut,” Dabbous explained. “That’s how I gathered 12 stories of 12 objects that people took with them in a hurry.”
Objects embroidered included a friendship necklace from Syria, tatriz embroidery from Palestine, a mobile phone from Yemen, a goat from Mali, a geography book from the Republic of Central Africa, a water gallon from Rwanda, Probetol pills from Afghanistan, a violin from Myanmar, a family photo from Venezuela, a stuffed teddy bear from Ukraine and a pacifier from Kosovo. One mattress with a big X sign on it indicated that a man from Iraq could not take anything at all.
Dabbous explained that the mattresses themselves celebrate yet another object that refugees take on with them while on the move. “I cannot take away that image from my head.. Refugees leaving Edlib in Syria, with colorful patterned mattresses,” Dabbous said. “The mattresses at this moment became the home, the couch and the bed. They looked so colorful amid this dim, heart-breaking scene.”
Along with the embroidery artworks, the exhibition features 15 one-of-a-kind adornments made with enamel, macrame and precious found objects. The necklaces allude to the war, to borders, and to the stability that refugees seek when leaving their hometowns. A slideshow projected pictures of refugees on the wall and people were asked to write down what they would take with them in a notebook prepared for this end at the gallery.
“My hope is that this topic will bring the subject of refugees home,” Dabbous said. “We have all seen so many TV images, news images of other people leaving home. They eventually become a number. But when we think of this decision-making process and we ask ourselves what we would have taken with us if we were in a similar situation, we suddenly understand the difficulty of this situation at a personal level.”
Yasmine Dabbous is based in Beirut. She chiefly uses fiber arts and jewelry design to comment on contemporary socio-cultural issues, influenced by her upbringing in a tumultuous region. After a long career in journalism and journalism education, Dabbous left her professorial position at the Lebanese American University to study textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Today, her portfolio includes exhibitions in Beirut, New York City, Washington DC and London.
Dabbous is the founder of Kinship Stories, a line of tribal art necklaces that celebrate cultures. She is also the co-founder of Espace Fann, a Beirut-based creative space teaching formal art and design.
The show continues until February 26, 2023.
Source: National News Agency – Lebanon