Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your damaged bones
Palestinian-Saudi artist Dana Awartani makes her debut on the Venice Artwork Biennale 2024 with an expressive set up of darning on medicinally dyed silk. Titled Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your damaged bones, the set up explores how warfare and terrorism repeatedly result in the destruction of historic and cultural websites within the Arab World. She visually interprets that endless tragedy by bodily increasing her paintings, including extra layers and material ‘to make room for newer documentation,’ notes author and researcher Saira Ansari.
Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your damaged bones, 2024 | darning on medicinally dyed silk, 520 × 1250 × 297 cm | picture © Marco Zorzanello, courtesy La Biennale di Venezia
visualizing the mass destruction in gaza
For a few years, Dana Awartani (see extra right here) delved into the craftsmanship of indigenous communities throughout the Center East and India, primarily, looking for the knowledge and data of artisans to counterpoint her work. For this specific exhibition on the Venice Artwork Biennale, the artist makes use of that data to replicate on the mass destruction witnessed in Gaza since final October; bombings and bulldozers flattening properties and hospitals and locations of worships for months and indiscriminately. Assembled right into a sequence of suspended yellow and purple material, the set up marks these devastated websites by means of holes torn throughout the yards of silk.
Dana Awartani makes her debut on the Venice Artwork Biennale | picture © designboom
how dana awartani makes use of darning on medicinally dyed silk
‘Then she darns — a fading observe that’s extra intimate but undervalued in comparison with patchwork – every gash tenderly as a gesture for therapeutic; the ensuing scars symbolize the bodily and emotional ones left behind in the true world,’ continues Ansari. ‘The material is dipped in herb and spice-based pure dyes that carry medicinal worth, utilizing the sacred therapeutic properties embedded within the conventional textile dyeing practices of Kerala, which Awartani frolicked studying.’ You possibly can catch Come, let me heal your wounds. Let me mend your damaged bones on the Arsenale, as a part of the Biennale’s major exhibition: Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners In every single place.
picture © designboom
picture © designboom
picture © Marco Zorzanello, courtesy La Biennale di Venezia
picture © designboom
