Sama’/Ma’as, 2014

Sama’/Ma’as is a series of double-sided patchworks made from curtains and textiles frequently used in Beirut to shade the house from the sun and perhaps even more to shade the private space of the home from neighbouring onlookers. Each of the curtains displays two three-lettered Arabic root words, on either side, only rearranging slightly the order of the letters, allowing different readings of the same word.

These patchworks are a playful reflection on Arabic language resulting from a linguistic research based on readings of Lebanese sociology and linguist Ahmad Beydoun. In his chapter “the imaginary of leers”, Beydoun compares the meaning and origin as well as the choice of Arabs for certain leaders and how these are pronounced and what meaning they generate.
 

After Eight, 2014

A series of embroidery pieces portraying transcribed linguistic models of mixed dialects reflecting the plight of immigrants in their undertaking of language pedagogy. The embroidered fragments of dialects take them out of their vocal and transient spoken context into a fixed and etched state of permanence, weighing them by their own connotations. The series expose the relationship between semantics, phonetics and the role of letters as a visual symbol.
 

All Mother Tongues Are Difficult, 2014

A series of hand-stitched embroideries that transgress the form of a video still and the white text on black background in silent films in order to register a temporary synthesis of the artists research on the ever changing quality of language in relation to pronunciation, re-formulations and appropriations of expressions.