#ashya2

storytelling with majd abdel hamid // part 1

when majd talks about embroidery, it’s somehow romantic. the young, ramallah-based artist started dabbling in the art five years ago when he collaborated with eight women to make a series of warhol-like, cross stitch images of mohamed bouazizi. since then, he has been questioning the evolution of embroidery in palestine and what his role - if he has a role - is in this evolution.

in recent months, he’s spent hours stitching together a series of bright and colorful, morbid photographs from syria. by using a gentle medium to recreate these still shots of death, the same ones we scroll past on our newsfeed everyday, onlookers are seriously rubbed the wrong way. you’re forced to pause and question: what happened? who is that? what is their name? what the fux is wrong with the world?

we asked majd to share a story with us because, not only do we love his work, but he’s a super magnetic person. in this segment of ‘storytelling with:’ majd reflects on the admirable yet tacky, ‘avant garde’ embroiderer he stumbled upon in ramallah. also sharing thoughts on boring, ‘sexy keffiyeh’ fashions.

MAJD: i was about to travel and i needed to get a couple of things, it was around christmas time, and i saw a really, really, strange store. its name was boutique al asra, asra meaning prisoners. very politicized. especially during that time, there were hunger strikes and then you have this pop-shop named boutique al-asra. i loved the name.

i was walking down the vegetable market and there’s an alleyway that leads you to another street, usually it’s just selling bullshit stuff: mobile accessories, a couple of scarves, maybe some purses. i stopped there and there’s this guy sitting on a chair and he’s doing embroidery. i mean quality-wise, it’s horrible, but he’s doing embroidery and i had to stop.

we started talking. i told him that i do embroidery as well and i wanted to know more - what is this? what’s happening (referring to the man’s work)?

so at the beginning he started to tell me about his daughter and how he made stuff for her. he didn’t talk about the piece he was working on because there were a couple of guys around us.

i spent two hours there and after an hour he started opening up a little bit and showing me all these things he has done. he has trophies, he writes on single pieces of rice.

anyways, so we started talking and i think that was one of the most interesting places to see how embroidery functions. he was doing an embroidery that says ‘i love you’ on white fabric.

he was half way through it and he was listening to this song, this coded song with this woman that he later on told me the story of.

so there’s this story - i mean it’s this stereotypical kind of really cheesy, tacky story. he wanted to marry someone and her father refused because he’s from a refugee camp, she’s from a village. they don’t belong to the same social class. basically she was married off to another guy, he got married; she has children, he has children - but they’re still in touch. she has a code name, noor. which is not her name. he keeps writing her code name. and he was doing this embroidery all the time.

i asked him if guys around him ridiculed him, because it’s not that often you see a man who is not labeled as an artist or cultural practitioner doing embroidery as a form of expression in a very delicate way.

there’s also this very intimate relationship when you do embroidery because you use your hands, you actually sweat on it, maybe that’s a little bit disgusting but, you know, you’re using it, you’re touching it the whole time, it’s not like painting with a brush. it’s completely different. it’s more like a sculpture actually, it’s really a sculptural piece. so he’s doing that as a pillowcase for her and that was his project for the next couple of months.

i never came back to that place and i wanted to do a long video with him but it kind of resonated because there is this question of - you know, there is this rupture, this really abrupt and violent rupture in the production of embroidery. embroidery, to my understanding, and i might be completely off, but to my understanding it’s more like a very autonomous form of expression that is collective in a way. you never sign it, it’s never about someone.

it takes a lot of time but it’s also soothing, it’s organic and it’s natural. you see the (traditional) dresses and it’s basically the landscape, i mean the landscape before 60 years, but it’s the landscape of the place, it’s the birds that used to live there. but that’s the problem, it’s like reviving a dead body over and over again, and i understand you have to keep your heritage - but in a way you’re killing off embroidery.

i mean the only thing that was different was in the first intifada when women started using embroidery on their dresses to make palestinian flags, and some had grenades, some had logos of political parties - very politicized dresses. and then the dress became public space, a form of expression, because there was a crack down on the flag, the idea of the flag specifically, you can see that in the works of khaled hourani and a couple of artists - it was not allowed to have the palestinian flag anywhere.

in a way, when you think of embroidery you always think ‘so what's next?’ is it going to continue, is it going to stick? and after the exhibition [that included my embroidery of mohamed bouazizi] i started to think do i fit, really, within this pattern? how do you deal with embroidery? i mean should we also just stick to the dresses? or maybe develop it. and i don’t mean develop it, i have nothing against it. it’s not really interesting to me to be honest - the whole keffiyeh fashion shows or this new class in ramallah that’s having a shirt with tatreez and it shows some cleavage and its modern, sexy etc. for me this is really not interesting because they are copy pasting more or less - just using more expensive material. commodifying death basically.

and to follow on this idea. this guy [in al asra] was avant garde in a way. in a way he is using embroidery, regardless of the aesthetics, regardless of the technique, he is actually using it for a very functional purpose. there’s a reason why he’s doing it. it’s very specific. it’s coded. it has this romantic background to it, that is less interesting to me to be honest, BUT he’s actually doing that which is very interesting.

from nablus to ramallah // when i left my camera in a service last summer, traveling from nablus to ramallah, i was **lucky** enough to track down the driver hours after realizing it was gone. over the course of a few days, and many miscommunications later, we finally met up at the central bus station in ramallah after he completed one of his daily routes coming from nablus.

what is a ‘couch moment’ ?

many moons ago in the city of Haifa the couch moment was born when two washed out girls found themselves trapped in shitty conversation with a third party till the early hours of the morning. a couch moment is basically a moment when a person has no idea when it’s the appropriate time to leave a situation: whether it be a party or one-on-one hangout. you are stuck in conversation with this person. typically this character excessively talks at you, not picking up on social cues that it’s time to shut the fuck up, while you mutter things like “nice” or “interesting” or “damn.” the person creating a couch moment tends to become inappropriately deep in his conversation, oversharing, and never tiring. common side effects of experiencing a couch moment include: entering a black hole, fake yawning, feelings of utter disgust and hatred. this doesn’t necessarily have to happen on a couch (although it frequently does).

how is a ‘couch moment’ created ?

it’s created by a person who is too fucked up and thinks everyone else is on their level and having a really good time. to be the person trapped in conversation with the person committing a couch moment is truly a trauma-inducing experience.

how do you get out of a ‘couch moment’ experience ?