Beirut Works I • Embroiderers of actuality -مطرزات الزمن الراهن

Beirut Works I

SYRIAN REFUGEE WOMEN

embroiderers-of-actuality

I come from Kobane When I was there, ISIS came to fight us. Women and children had to abandon the city because for ISIS we are infidels and that’s why they will kill all of us. PKK told us: women and young people that can take up arms can stay; everybody else has to leave the territory. For you, for your security, and for your honor, you have to leave. Everybody who is married and has children has to leave.

Project It is a fragile moment for the Mediterranean and all over the world, socially and politically. The crisis has brought into question the lack of fundamental values and organizations, not to mention art in dialogue with the civil society, particularly with women. It is this context in relation to the question of what ‘resistance’ means and how we might perform it that is the subjects of our project. “Embroiderers of Actuality” is an action that aims to be a sensible provocation: a visual discussion about the position of women in the society. As an exchange between local populations and artists, its purpose is to map diversities of (feminine) resistance within the realities of the Global South. The project uses texts of art, poetry and literature, written by local women, and employs embroidery as a form of folk craftsmanship that speaks to notions of belonging, tradition and participation. Through this, the project aims to provide an opportunity for women to express their voice and to improve their socio-economic situation, since the embroidery work is paid, thereby generating an additional source of income. In this sense, “Embroiderers of Actuality” is also a confrontation and a statement between yesterday and today, between politics and religion, between modernity and tradition. Art is used here as a tool to realize a dialogue between the local population and artists. This situation questions contemporary art as such, as a possibility or necessity to bring art into the public sphere. This dialogue will develop, confront and stimulate the research for the artist (conceptual and formal) and will be, at the same time, a medium of communication, working in the intersection between the private sphere and the public one. Biography Aglaia Haritza Born in Ticino Switzerland, Aglaia Haritz received her artistic maturity diploma in 1999 at the CSIA in Lugano, Switzerland. In 2003, she graduated with a National Diploma of Fine Arts from ENSA in Limoges, France. She has exhibited in Museums and in Contemporary Art Centres in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France, Holland and Slovenia. Her works are parts of important Art Collections. Since 1996, parallel to her studies and artistic practice, she has developed a social artistic research program collaborating in humanitarian projects in India, Central Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, South America and the West Bank. In 2011, she was selected for the art residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Early this year she has been selected to attend the Artist in Residence in Cairo, in Rabat and in Casablanca. She lives and works in Zurich since 2011. Abdelaziz Zerrou Born in Casablanca, He lives and works there. Abdelaziz Zerrou is one of the young artists of Morocco. He graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tétouan. Artistic Director of a graphic design studio “group3″ he founded while continuing his research in visual arts. The artist’s career took a turning point when he participated in the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean (BJCEM) in Bari, Italy. This participation allowed him to confirm but also refine his artistic resolutely contemporary mostly in the graphic register, with a preference for universal symbolic figures: “memory 16″ or “drawing lesson” presented at the exhibition “body and figures of the body”, the art space of the Societé Générale in Casablanca, and “the war is not a game”, a mural in situ, presented at the Triennial in Luanda, Angola. The artwork “love revolution” was showed at the Galleria Continua Paris and at the New Art Exchange Museum of Nottingham, UK, and also “eurabia” made in Netherland.From 2009 he was in more art residences as: Cité Internationales des Arts in Paris, Dar Al-Ma’mûn Art Residency in Marrakesh, Studio Rondo Art Residency in Graz, Austria, DordtYart Art Residency in Dordrecht, Netherland and Artellewa in Cairo. Zerrou is also co-creator of a group: Young African Artists (jaa), which supports artistic creativity in Africa.

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Pdf - Stories of exile

« Pink women » are drawings where the story of exile of each woman is superimposed. (See PDF).

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Beirut Works II