Embroidery as artistic practice, collective memory and space for encounter
An art project by Aglaia Haritz and Abdelaziz Zerrou | 2013 – ongoing
Embroiderers of Actuality is a transdisciplinary, participatory art project started in 2013 by Aglaia Haritz and Abdelaziz Zerrou. Born in Cairo, it has grown over the years through encounters, residencies, collaborations and processes of collective creation in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Malta and Switzerland.
At the heart of the research is embroidery, understood not only as a textile technique or a craft, but as an artistic language, a means of communication and a way of creating relationships between individuals, cultures and different social contexts.
Through thread, fabric, words, images, video and sound, the project explores the relationships between individual experiences and collective transformations, questioning issues of identity, memory, migration, the condition of women, rights, work, language and belonging.
Embroidery thus becomes a space where personal experiences, historical narratives and contemporary questions can meet, overlap and turn into new visual forms.
A shared language
The starting point of Embroiderers of Actuality is simple: to create the conditions for people from different backgrounds to meet around a common activity.
Embroidery introduces a particular sense of time. It is a slow, repetitive, focused gesture that lets conversation develop without having to follow a set structure. While the hands work, memories, opinions, questions, stories and silences emerge.
In this process, the creative act is not separate from the human experience that accompanies it. The time spent making a work is also time devoted to listening, getting to know one another and building relationships.
The artistic practice develops through an ongoing dialogue between the artists and the people involved. Each participant contributes their own knowledge, sensitivity and interpretation of the images proposed.
The project does not simply aim to represent people or tell their stories from the outside. Rather, it seeks to build situations in which they can take part directly in producing and transforming the images that concern them.
The work is thus born of a relationship, a shared process and a plurality of perspectives.
Images, symbols and transformations
One of the central elements of the artistic research is the relationship between images and collective memory.
Historical portraits, maps, photographs, words, everyday objects and representations from cultural or political archives become the starting point of a process of reinterpretation.
Through manual intervention, these images are altered, crossed and sometimes contradicted by the thread.
Embroidery can highlight a detail, hide part of the image, introduce new signs or completely transform its meaning.
A historical portrait can become an occasion to discuss the role of women in society. An object traditionally associated with men’s work can be covered in thread and take on a new identity. A word can become an image, while a language can find material form through fabric.
These interventions create a tension between the original meaning of the images and the new interpretations produced by the people working on them.
The project regards images as cultural and historical constructions, never entirely neutral. Every representation carries with it power relations, social conventions and forms of memory.
Intervening on images therefore means questioning the way reality is told, remembered and passed on.
Embroidery between history and the contemporary
Embroidery belongs to a long history of manual, domestic and collective practices. In many cultures it has been a means of decoration, of passing on knowledge, of personal expression and of preserving memory.
Often associated with the female sphere and with little-recognised forms of work, embroidery holds technical skills, visual codes and knowledge handed down through generations.
Embroiderers of Actuality starts from this heritage to place it within a contemporary artistic reflection.
The project does not try to reproduce textile traditions as unchanging forms, but to bring them into relation with the experiences and questions of the present.
The traditional gesture becomes a means of addressing political, social and cultural issues. Manual practice engages with photographic images, audiovisual technologies, archives and contemporary modes of representation.
The strength of embroidery also lies in its apparent simplicity. A needle, a thread and a textile surface can become tools for addressing complex questions without imposing a single language or a single interpretation.
A project in motion
From its beginnings, Embroiderers of Actuality has developed as an open project, in which each new territory brings different people, collaborations, materials and questions.
Each chapter arises from a specific geographical, historical and social context. It is not about transferring an identical artistic model from one place to another, but about building a method able to adapt to the conditions and the people encountered.
Collaborations with associations, cooperatives, cultural institutions, social organisations and local communities are a fundamental part of this process.
These relationships make it possible to create opportunities for encounter that go beyond the traditional boundaries of exhibition spaces and involve people who do not necessarily belong to the world of contemporary art.
The itinerant nature of the project also reflects a broader enquiry into the concept of the border.
Borders are not only geographical lines separating territories and states. They can be linguistic, cultural, economic, social and symbolic.
Through dialogue and shared creation, the project tries to question these separations, making visible experiences that often remain on the margins of dominant narratives.
The eight chapters
Cairo, Egypt — 2013
Revolution and memory
The first chapter was born in Cairo, in collaboration with Artellewa Art Residency and the Huda Shaarawi association.
At a time marked by the political transformations that followed the Egyptian revolution, the project involves embroiderers and young women in work on portraits of women from Egyptian history and culture.
Readings of women writers and intellectuals accompany discussions on freedom, political participation and the role of women in shaping historical memory.
Embroidery becomes a tool for bringing images of the past into the questions of the present.
Rabat, Morocco — 2014
Body, identity and public space
In Rabat, the project develops through collaborations with Le Cube, the Fondation Orient-Occident and the Association Marocaine pour l’Éducation de la Jeunesse.
The activities involve Moroccan women and women with experiences of migration, addressing questions of the body, sexuality, social conventions and freedom of expression.
The works introduce images and words capable of challenging established representations of the female body and its relationship with public space.
Casablanca, Morocco — 2014
Work and social construction
The Casablanca chapter involves associations, cooperatives and women detained in Oukacha prison.
The research focuses on gender roles, social conditions and representations of work.
Objects traditionally associated with men’s manual work, such as hammers and pliers, are transformed through embroidery, creating a contrast between materials, functions and symbolic meanings.
The artistic process opens a reflection on the recognition of women’s work and on the social structures that determine people’s roles.
Marrakech and surroundings, Morocco — 2014
The Amazigh language and transmission
The project meets communities of embroiderers and weavers in the areas of Tighdouine, Aït Ourir and Tamesloht.
The research focuses on the Amazigh language, the transmission of knowledge and the relationship between orality, writing and visual representation.
Words and signs in Tifinagh are transformed through embroidery and weaving, giving shape to works that question the relationship between language, cultural identity and memory.
Beirut and Shatila, Lebanon — 2015
Portrait, identity and exile
In collaboration with Basmeh & Zeitooneh and Art Residence Aley, the project meets Syrian refugee women in Lebanon.
The participants work on their own portraits through embroidery, transforming personal photographs into images that keep traces of their stories and their choices.
Video, recordings and testimonies accompany the textile work, addressing the relationship between personal memory, the experience of exile and the representation of identity.
The works do not reduce people to their refugee status, but seek to convey the complexity of their experiences and their individuality.
Marrakech, Morocco — 2016
Unreal Carpet
Unreal Carpet was born from a collaboration with the weavers of the Yagour cooperative in Tighdouine.
The project takes up a 17th-century European image of Morocco and reinterprets it through the making of a large red and black carpet.
Transforming the image opens a reflection on the European gaze, on historical representations of Moroccan territory and on the possibility of rereading these images through the work of those who live in the places depicted.
The final work brings together the carpet, the video, the installation and the exhibition space.
Malta — 2017–2018
Exiled Homes
Exiled Homes addresses the relationship between migration, domestic work, home and belonging.
The project involves fifteen Filipino women employed in domestic and care work in Malta.
Through drawings, embroidery, cushions and sound recordings, the participants share experiences of distance from their families, of work and of building a sense of home in another country.
The works allow the public to connect with personal stories through an intimate and sensory dimension.
Lugano, Switzerland — 2025–2026 / 2026–2027
Embroidery as storytelling
The Swiss chapter takes place in Lugano, with a participatory process involving refugee women and women living locally.
Embroidery becomes a meeting place for different languages, origins, generations and memories.
Through shared work, the participants explore the relationship between personal experience and collective storytelling, developing visual forms able to embrace differences and points of view.
This chapter extends the research towards new forms of cultural participation and of building relationships through artistic practice.
From process to artwork
The works of Embroiderers of Actuality take different forms: embroidered fabrics, portraits, carpets, transformed objects, installations, photographs, videos and sound compositions.
This plurality of languages reflects the transdisciplinary nature of the project.
Embroidery remains central, but constantly interacts with other means of representation.
Photography makes it possible to work with personal images and historical archives. Video records gestures, situations and testimonies. Sound conveys the oral and temporal dimension of the encounter. Installation organises these materials in space and introduces new possibilities for relating to the public.
The final work is considered not only as an autonomous object, but also as the visible trace of a broader process.
Each embroidered stitch bears witness to a gesture and a moment in time. Each transformed image keeps a relationship between the person who proposed it and the person who reinterpreted it.
The public presentation of the works is a further moment in the project, in which the experiences developed during the encounters enter into dialogue with other viewers and new cultural contexts.
A practice of listening and responsibility
Working with personal experiences, difficult memories and complex social contexts requires constant reflection on the responsibilities of artistic practice.
Participation must not be confused with simply collecting testimonies.
In Embroiderers of Actuality, the relationship between artists and participants is built through shared time, trust and the recognition of different positions.
The people involved are not only represented subjects, but actively contribute to the development of the works and their meanings.
The project considers it essential to respect the uniqueness of each experience, avoiding turning individual stories into generic representations of a community or a social condition.
Silence, the choice not to tell, and the right to decide what can be shared are also part of this dimension.
The research is thus situated in a territory where contemporary art, participatory practice and social reflection meet without entirely coinciding.
The aim is not to replace the work of social institutions or to offer immediate solutions to complex issues, but to create situations in which art can produce new possibilities for attention, exchange and knowledge.
Partners and collaborations
The realisation of Embroiderers of Actuality was made possible through collaboration with many cultural institutions, associations, cooperatives, social organisations, artists’ residencies and local communities.
Each collaboration contributed to the development of the project through skills, knowledge of the area, spaces, resources and opportunities for encounter.
The partners are not merely an organisational support structure. They are part of the history and of the process of building the different chapters.
Their involvement made it possible to develop artistic research in different geographical and cultural contexts, while keeping a direct relationship with people and local realities.
The project also acknowledges the essential contribution of the participants, embroiderers, weavers and everyone who, through their work and commitment, took part in creating the works.
A research in constant transformation
From 2013 to today, Embroiderers of Actuality has built an artistic journey across different territories, languages and stories, keeping the value of encounter at its centre.
Each chapter contributes to an ever-evolving archive of works, images, testimonies, documents and human relationships.
The continuity of the project does not depend on repeating a technique or a format, but on being able, each time, to question anew the relationship between artistic practice and contemporary reality.
In a world where images are produced and consumed ever faster, embroidery introduces another temporality. It requires attention, presence, patience and a direct relationship with the material.
This slowness is not a withdrawal from the present, but a way of observing it more closely.
Through the thread, the project connects what is visible with what remains hidden, individual stories with collective ones, memory with the present, gesture with word.
The fabric becomes a meeting place between people and images, between personal experiences and public narratives.
Embroiderers of Actuality proposes an artistic practice in which embroidery does not merely decorate a surface, but questions reality, transforms images and builds new possibilities for relationship.