Stitches represent scars in Beirut blast survivor’s art show

October 8, 2021

By Marine Strauss

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Palestinian artist Majd Abdel Hamid, a survivor of the 2020 Beirut blast, has opened his first solo show in Brussels this month, with displays of embroidery and video installations to convey the passage of time.

Born in Syria and now based in Beirut, 33-year-old visual artist Majd Abdel Hamid embroiders fabrics he collects and items he finds, from cushions to kitchen towels.

At times colourful and at other times just white on white, they are designed as an abstract depiction of time and the places he has been, touching on wars, political and economic crises and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s been like an acceleration of traumas. It’s not even one trauma that you have. It’s been quite challenging to process what has happened and how can you deal with it,” Abdel Hamid told Reuters TV.

Abdel Hamid was injured in the explosion of ammonium nitrate stored at Beirut port in August 2020, with wooden fragments still stuck beneath a scar on his head. The embroidery stitches in his “A Stitch in Times” represent mental and physical scars.

The show at an exhibition space of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermes, at the back of the Hermes store in Brussels will be the first showing of all his work.

Abdel Hamid describes embroidery as a “timeless medium”, a slow process of doing and undoing. One display piece, “Salt of the Earth”, show threads suspended and crystallised by salt. Another shows him unthreading white bed sheets in his home.

“Embroidery is always used to celebrate the pride of a country, the pride of the family, it’s about motifs. When you embroider raw reality, dramatic situations or violence, it creates tension,” he said.

(Reporting by Marine Strauss @StraussMarine; Editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Alison Williams)

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