Kinships and Cosmologies (2025 - ongoing)
As Above, So Below: Kinships and Cosmologies (2025)
Tapestry, Painting on Silk, Embroidery, Collage
10.3 x 4.2 meters
Cotton, Silk, Gold Thread, Textile Paint
A large-scale tapestry bringing together plants with ancient mythological figures, planets and constellations of the zodiac. Rice, Pomegranate, the Date Palm and Za’tar, together with the gods of the sky as they were imagined across geographies from Europe, north Africa and central Asia. Foods traded east and west along these geographies passed through cities carrying more than the promise of new and exciting culinary flavors. They were also carrying the latest scientific, medicinal and technological developments, as well as spiritual philosophies from east and west. In a way these foods carried information for the foundational questions of life: how to better sustain ourselves on earth, and the spiritual meaning of it in the heavens.
In the center of the work is the Mesopotamian deity Inanna, the mythological depiction of Venus, the most revered goddess worshipped for thousands of years, before god became male. She is the goddess of love and war. Marduk to the right, holds lightening in his hands, and like the northern god Thor, he represents Jupiter. Others include Goya’s Saturn Eating his Children, and the moon god Khonsu, as well as the Simurgh, the mythical bird that represents the long quest to finding the self in Sufi traditions. Above them, the body of the all-encompassing sky goddess Nut who carries the stars, and gives birth to the sun every morning.
This work was made in collaboration with Ahmad Arabov a master embroider from Bukhara, together with his team of embroiders from the city of Nurato, in Uzbekistan. The drawings for this mural were interpreted in the Zandani-style embroidery of Bukhara, and a few new elements we added by Ahmad Arabov. The piece was commissioned by the ACDF Uzbekistan for the 1st Biennial of Bukhara (2025), curated by Diana Campbell under the title ‘Recipes for Broken Hearts’.
Tapestry, Painting on Silk, Embroidery, Collage
10.3 x 4.2 meters
Cotton, Silk, Gold Thread, Textile Paint
A large-scale tapestry bringing together plants with ancient mythological figures, planets and constellations of the zodiac. Rice, Pomegranate, the Date Palm and Za’tar, together with the gods of the sky as they were imagined across geographies from Europe, north Africa and central Asia. Foods traded east and west along these geographies passed through cities carrying more than the promise of new and exciting culinary flavors. They were also carrying the latest scientific, medicinal and technological developments, as well as spiritual philosophies from east and west. In a way these foods carried information for the foundational questions of life: how to better sustain ourselves on earth, and the spiritual meaning of it in the heavens.
In the center of the work is the Mesopotamian deity Inanna, the mythological depiction of Venus, the most revered goddess worshipped for thousands of years, before god became male. She is the goddess of love and war. Marduk to the right, holds lightening in his hands, and like the northern god Thor, he represents Jupiter. Others include Goya’s Saturn Eating his Children, and the moon god Khonsu, as well as the Simurgh, the mythical bird that represents the long quest to finding the self in Sufi traditions. Above them, the body of the all-encompassing sky goddess Nut who carries the stars, and gives birth to the sun every morning.
This work was made in collaboration with Ahmad Arabov a master embroider from Bukhara, together with his team of embroiders from the city of Nurato, in Uzbekistan. The drawings for this mural were interpreted in the Zandani-style embroidery of Bukhara, and a few new elements we added by Ahmad Arabov. The piece was commissioned by the ACDF Uzbekistan for the 1st Biennial of Bukhara (2025), curated by Diana Campbell under the title ‘Recipes for Broken Hearts’.