Unravelled

majd abdel hamid · mounira al solh · yto barrada · taysir batniji · alighiero e boetti · michele cohen · janna dyk · mona hatoum · sheila hicks · annette messager · khalil rabah · karen reimer · nasri sayegh · laure tixier · raed yassin

curated by rachel dedman and marie muracciole

unravelled is a group exhibition that deals with embroidery in contemporary artistic practice. organized in collaboration with the palestinian museum and co-curated by rachel dedman and marie muracciole, it brings together a number of widely-acclaimed international and regional artists.

unravelled emerged from dedman’s large-scale research project for the palestinian museum on the history and politics of palestinian embroidery, which culminated in the exhibition at the seams in beirut in 2016. this striking satellite show dedman curated for the new palestinian museum and hosted by dar el-nimer for arts and culture, analyzes in-depth the historical and political uses of a craft that deals precisely with a geographical and identity-driven language. responding to this project, unravelled looks at embroidery in recent artists’ practices and unravels some of the questions that these peculiar gestures raise: to disentangle and investigate at the same time. as embroidery has lost its former relationship with tradition, identity, and place-hood, artists today are embarking on something new. therefore, this exhibition encompasses the wider practice of embroidery, reflecting on the ways in which different artists, from the twentieth century until today, have dealt with embroidery’s various significations as concealment, as narrative, as a marker of time and as a form of gendered labour. the exhibition explores these different positions and experiments with the generative exchanges embroidery can confront by virtue of its situation between masculine and feminine; art, craft and industry; the figurative and the abstract; concept and materiality; the decorative and the destructive; concealment and revelation.