My artistic practice serves as an investigation and mapping of lineage, movement and ingrained narratives that exist within textiles. My practice is centred around the ideas of materiality both of which is investigated through its physical forms as well as through metaphorical conceptions. The headscarf or the ‘Hijab’ is the primary material component within my art practice. These scarfs were given to me, passed down through familial lineages and collected over the years. I am most interested in their material quality not only through their worn and worn(ness) but, also how they become carriers and traces of material identities, re-presentation, identification and womanhood.
Through manipulating, strengthening and re-observing what it means to represent and to wear these scarf’s intend to find ways of disruption: disruption of stereotypical renditions of the veiled woman, disruption of the supposed ‘soft’ ‘gentle’ and ‘subdued’ woman, the disruption of the supposed fragility and frailty associated with the scarf. But rather how the scarf becomes present, celebrated, acknowledged, recognized and associated with agency, defiance and power asserted by and produced by women.
