A collaborative project with the ACG/The Demos Center, 17 Ipitou St., Plaka, Athens.
Jun 5-July 12, 2025 Curated by Dr. Tamara Chalabi
Connecting artistic practices from the Mediterranean, Middle East, and their diasporas, this exhibition brings together ten artists working in clay and textile—two of humanity's most ancient and eloquent materials. Surviving across time, these earthbound materials bear intimate traces of human touch and intention. Both clay and textile hold memory in their very structure—through impression, weave, and mark—creating permanent records of gesture and tactility. These mediums serve as material witnesses in the truest sense—clay bearing the literal impressions of hands from centuries past, textiles carrying in their weave the encoded narratives of their makers. From ancient fingerprints etched in clay to modern textile art charting paths of exile, their story endures across millennia.
This intrinsic connection between these materials reaches back to our earliest artifacts, perhaps most poetically embodied in the Sleeping Lady of Malta—a Neolithic clay figurine who’s carefully rendered drapery speaks to humanity's enduring impulse to document both form and fabric. Working across continents and cultures, these artists weave narratives of ancestral heritage and contemporary global issues. Majd Abdul Hamid explores displacement and memory through meticulous embroidered documentations; Elif Uras bridges ceramics and textile patterns in her distinctive sculptures, examining gender and class through traditional techniques and contemporary sensibility. Paolo Colombo and Francesco Simeti reimagine Mediterranean antiquity— Colombo through delicate embroidered mosaic portraits and Simeti through his intricate installations -- both channeling their connections to multiple artistic traditions. Tancredi di Carcaci explores deep rooted representational symbols and the notion of the sanctified body, through his ceramic sculptures, inviting the viewer to explore this through a contemporary and ancient lens. Iliodora Margellos creates contemplative landscapes from thread works, exploring the intersection of topography and mythology, while Lydia Delikoura translates processes of decay through experimental canvases. Nuveen Barwari weaves together diasporic fragment of inherited and lived experience; Afsoon builds multimedia works that combine clay and textile fusing different cultural traditions, combining personal storytelling with universal themes; and Hale Ekinci examines hybrid identity through embroidered family photographs.
Clay and textile have served as silent witnesses to human civilization for millennia, carrying within their substance the techniques, patterns, and cultural practices passed down through generations. Working from positions that span multiple geographies and cultural contexts, these artists transform traditional materials into potent vehicles for exploring questions of belonging, heritage, and cultural preservation. Through their diverse artistic approaches, these artists reveal how materials that have witnessed millennia of human experience transform into powerful testimonies of present-day identity, memory, and resistance. The exhibition invites viewers to listen to these material voices, considering how the act of making becomes a form of witnessing, and how traditional techniques speak to urgent contemporary concerns.
