Title: Ceasefire in Gaza
Year: 2024
Media: Found cotton t-shirt, found and donated embroidery, cotton thread
I started sewing Ceasefire in Gaza in the weeks following October 11. I had been cleaning the workshop of my friend Louis, a tailor, who I found working knee deep in fabric offcuts that had piled up over months. I like helping people clean their workspaces and homes. I often end up working with their stories in my scroll paintings, and also materials for collage. But the events following October 11, and the genocide inflicted on the Palestininan people found me so distressed I could not sit and focus on painting. I could not go to Gaza to offer direct assistance and I had little money to donate. I was in South India at the time and I roamed the streets restlessly. In Louis' workshop I poured myself into cleaning his floor and felt a little useful.
As I sorted the fabric waste, the many lovely fragments of cloth that I found suggested ideas. I thought of protest t-shirts, such as the ones generated by painter Ruth Waller. Though protest t-shirts are normally printed, the idea of applique appealed to me because of the low-tech aspect of hand sewing, and because of the labour that creating would involve. I needed a channel of focus, a way of sublimating senses of rage and despair. I was stitching as a way of prayer. The horror perpetrated by Israel is not new - but to know and to watch the world do nothing to check it was, is as horrifying.
I completed the t-shirt in 2024. It took about four months. The writing says "Ceasefire" in languages of Urdu, Hindi, Hebrew, Yolŋu dharuk, and English.
I wear the t-shirt when I know I will be going into a busy public space, such as a shopping mall, airport, or public event, to voice prayer for an end to madness.
Year: 2024
Media: Found cotton t-shirt, found and donated embroidery, cotton thread
I started sewing Ceasefire in Gaza in the weeks following October 11. I had been cleaning the workshop of my friend Louis, a tailor, who I found working knee deep in fabric offcuts that had piled up over months. I like helping people clean their workspaces and homes. I often end up working with their stories in my scroll paintings, and also materials for collage. But the events following October 11, and the genocide inflicted on the Palestininan people found me so distressed I could not sit and focus on painting. I could not go to Gaza to offer direct assistance and I had little money to donate. I was in South India at the time and I roamed the streets restlessly. In Louis' workshop I poured myself into cleaning his floor and felt a little useful.
As I sorted the fabric waste, the many lovely fragments of cloth that I found suggested ideas. I thought of protest t-shirts, such as the ones generated by painter Ruth Waller. Though protest t-shirts are normally printed, the idea of applique appealed to me because of the low-tech aspect of hand sewing, and because of the labour that creating would involve. I needed a channel of focus, a way of sublimating senses of rage and despair. I was stitching as a way of prayer. The horror perpetrated by Israel is not new - but to know and to watch the world do nothing to check it was, is as horrifying.
I completed the t-shirt in 2024. It took about four months. The writing says "Ceasefire" in languages of Urdu, Hindi, Hebrew, Yolŋu dharuk, and English.
I wear the t-shirt when I know I will be going into a busy public space, such as a shopping mall, airport, or public event, to voice prayer for an end to madness.