Dana Awartani in conversation with Myrna Eyad about her newly commissioned work for the Al Burda Endowment granted by the UAE Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development.
ME: All of your work is made using natural materials.
DA: In recent years, a theme that popped up a lot was the idea of sustainability and living an ethical lifestyle – we live in a harmful way to the environment and we dispose of things very quickly, so I like the idea of repairing objects and this is also why I use natural pigments, even in my paintings. I then wanted to take it a step further by tapping into the meaning of natural dyes. In the Indian and Arab cultures, we used to use herbs and spices as remedies (still practiced in South Asia), but now rely more on Western traditions. I found a Hand Loom Weavers Development Society in Kerala and loved the ethos of how they function – they predominantly hire women from poor communities, they don’t use machines, the leftover dye is used as biofuel, spices and herbs are sourced by local people from the local forest and everything is sustainable.
ME: What attracted you to this process?
DA: The ethics and historical accuracy. The textile industry is responsible for a lot of global pollution. In my dyes, instead, over 50 medicinal plants were used and I like the idea of healing through nature and through textiles. Today, we only apply preservation to carpets, and not to other fabrics or textiles. In India, for example, expensive textiles like Kashmiri shawls take a year to make. If it gets damaged, it would not be thrown it out, but rather, repaired and safeguarded because there is a culture of preservation of textiles. The more I spent time in India, and saw how they cared for fabrics, the more I saw how they defied the lingering legacy of the British occupation, which sadly sacrificed the local hand loom industry in favour of industrialisation. I found it a form of resistance and I love that powerful political aspect to it.
ME: Is it ironic that you have applied plants that have healing powers to a concept that is about destruction?
DA: I believe that answers can be found in nature and that nature is the best teacher, but I also value the ancient knowledge encapsulated by these textiles and healing cloths. For example, maybe they can help someone grieve and studies have shown that they do help people with physical ailments. Some of the plants in my piece include turmeric, holy basil, aloe vera, henna, jasmine, pomegranate and lotus, all of which have cultural references.
ME: What are some common denominators between this piece and previous ones?
DA: The meditative aspect is really true for all of my work. My practice is inspired by traditional art, which is incredibly laborious; you have to do it over and over again. The illumination that I do, for example, takes months. Though I like to change medium a lot, the meditative aspect is always rooted in every piece I do.
ME: How did your interest in textiles develop?
DA: It began during my participation in the Kochi Muziris Biennale, it was there where I first had the opportunity to collaborate with embroiders from Ahmedabad and have continued ever since. More specifically my interest in ‘ratta’ or more commonly know as darning in English which i am using in this piece, came about when one of my previous artworks had a tear in it and as I did not know how to repair it, I had to remake it. Now that I have learnt more about preservation and darning, it opened a whole new chapter in my work with textiles.
ME: Your previous work focused on spirituality and history. Recently, there has been a shift to cultural destruction. How did that happen?
DA: I have been interested in it for the last few years. While I do not consider this work some sort of grandiose solution to heal the Middle East, it is, however, about how I, as an artist, see our collective history being destroyed. I am not just a Saudi, or a Palestinian or a Syrian; I am Arab. I cannot identify with any one nationality, and I think this multicultural aspect to me is my strength because I care about the whole of the Middle East and not just one country. My work addresses themes across the Arab world and focuses on cross-cultural dialogue. India is included because our histories have intersected, especially through trade.
ME: You want to show the pain.
DA: Exactly. There is a lot of pain. I want to induce a feeling of sympathy, in that I want people to feel pain, but not in a hostile way – in a poetic manner. I think it is more effective to take the audience by the hand and lead them. Confronting people aggressively is repellent and can only create limitations. I have to find more subtle ways of communicating ideas.
ME: How did you decide on the aesthetics and colours?
DA: Seven countries are represented here – Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The countries with the most cultural destruction (Iraq, Syria and Libya) were divided into two panels each and there are 10 panels of different sizes in total. I used several colours for practical purposes and depth; they are also all found in nature (red, yellow, orange and green). I want people to come close and walk in amongst the textiles so they can smell them and see the detailed embroidery.
ME: How does this correspond geographically?
DA: The intention is not to identify the countries by looking at the textiles. I did a lot of research into the destruction of monuments, looking at sites before and after. I distributed it by country, looked at the cities, pinpointed where each monument was (or had been) and put a dot where each was destroyed. I created multiple printouts and had architectural sheets made to abstract the locations. So, while I can point the countries out to myself, I specifically did not want this to look like a map. I feel that that is so overdone. This meant no borders or countries, it had to be abstract. The dots rendered here are in different sizes purely because of the design I wanted, not to denote the gravity of destruction: a destroyed monument is a destroyed monument. The physical scale doesn’t matter.
ME: Sadly, this is an ongoing piece in the sense that cultural destruction will continue to happen.
DA: Yes, the destruction by many different terrorist groups begins with the Arab Spring and carries all the way through to August 2019 in this piece. I am hoping there won’t be more. I hope it is now about rebuilding.
ME: The way to eradicate a civilisation is to destroy its culture.
DA: Absolutely. Not only do so many in the West not know about our rich, pluralistic society, many in the Arab world are unaware too. I don’t want to be nostalgic and think of the past, but this is one the darkest times in our history as Arabs. We need to re-educate, preserve and shift attitudes about what is important in our cultures. Our people feel their culture is inferior in comparison to the West.
ME: How do you get people to take pride in their roots?
DA: First and foremost: education. When I was at school in Saudi Arabia, there was nothing in the curriculum about Arab history, which means there is almost no way for younger people to engage with our countries’ past. Another very important aspect is stability: the West prospers because of stability. We don’t have that here because we are focused on survival. Also, one can learn so much from working with craftsmen. Look at calligraphers and illuminators – historically, they were taken in by the royal courts and had patrons support there work. One wonders what will happen to the now-refugee master craftsmen of Syria and Iraq. I feel like today, it’s on us, the younger generation to be involved and I see more taking an active interest in our culture. Hopefully, this will have a ripple effect.
ME: How is this work a departure from your previous pieces?
DA: There are a lot of firsts in this work – it marks the first time I use colours in my textile s, the first time I actually embroider myself, and the first time I have not used geometry or floral motifs. It is quite liberating. As a young artist, I am at a stage where I can play with different things and not be limited to any one medium and aesthetic. Conceptually, the work is tied to Islam in that it looks at cultural destruction in the Middle East committed by Islamic fundamentalists, and some of these ruined sites include mosques, shrines, churches as well as pre-Islamic sites.