liane al ghusain 10/26/23 liane al ghusain 10/26/23

I Would Tread Lightly [2023]

This exhibition presents objects related to being a Palestinian in diaspora, and more specifically, the sense of heaviness that results from vicarious trauma and unbelonging. Upon abstracting the said heaviness into geometric embroidery, serial sculptures, non-narrative videos, and performance works, the artist finds entry points for processing emotional trauma, both individually and collectively.

The video works in I Would Tread Lightly cluster around the themes of glitches, self-censorship, and the surreal search for home. A series of sculptures made of clay, textile, resin, and children’s play objects, act as stand-ins for the women and children from Palestine who are illegally held in occupier prisons. Also represented in this body of works are the 12 withheld bodies of Palestinians who have died in prison, never to be given a funeral or dignified burial. The embroideries in the show are a series of maps that reinterpret traditional Palestinian embroidery motifs, both as containers and as speculative escape plans.

Another cluster of works explore the impressions from her first trip to Palestine at age 34. The writings, Palestine Striations, are created with Al Ghusain’s non-dominant hand, in order to tap into the subconscious. She also explores the landscape of Palestine, specifically its hills, sunsets, and waterfalls as a way of joyously experiencing what should have been part of her childhood and as a catalyst for an intentional mourning process as an adult.

READ: Exhibition Catalog

liane al ghusain 10/24/23 liane al ghusain 10/24/23

WHY? - [2021]

I knew from watching my grandmother create tapestries and even chairs upholstered in embroidery that it was time-consuming. When I went to my first cross-stitch exhibition, all the women there wanted to check the back of my work, which is how they determined my “level” as an embroiderer. I learned that potential mother-in-laws in Palestine would check the backs of the embroideries of the son’s future wives. If the stitches were indeed neat, the stitcher was deemed marriageable.

The organization of stitching serves as a metonym for one’s capability to run a household. From my own observations, I saw that if my cross-stitches were pre-planned, I could make short, straight dashes on their reverse, as opposed to diagonal ones - this saves thread over time i.e., it is the most direct route between point a and b. In the minds of Palestinian mothers in law, I’m sure this was something to consider, for imported cotton thread is expensive and hard to come by. So, I began to practice. As I fell in love with craft, I decided to make the work more conceptual and contemporary, in line with my background as an artist. I wanted to think about the cross-stitch not as a 2D object but a 3D one. I set out to make artwork that was more minimal so that it could be more capacious in holding audiences’ multiple perspectives. This meant working with fewer colors and motifs, and finding a core concept to communicate with each tatreez work.

Once I developed my tatreez skills, I began to realize that cross-stitches manifested neat dashes on the back of the canvas when they were done in a uniform fashion. And THEN I realized that I could control which direction the dashes would go. Which meant that I could hide secret messages in the back of my work. I have included a sample of a work I did, where I imagined my future mother-in-law would look at the back of my canvas and find a message there for her.

I am currently working on two large embroidery canvases (each measuring 110 x 145 cm) that will hide messages in Arabic for my future mother-in-law when she checks the back of my stitches. The pictured piece is a prototype for these artworks.

liane al ghusain 5/5/19 liane al ghusain 5/5/19

SHIT IS REAL - LECTURE PERFORMANCES [2019 - ONGOING]

The talk

Over the course of four days and three nights in 2020, the House of Beautiful Business connected thousands of people around the world. They used video, audio, and text, and met in both the virtual world and the real one at more than 30 local hubs and through outdoor activities amidst the covid pandemic to present The Great Wave. My talk was part of the main conference in a session titled “Weak Signals.”

Main themes

How are sex work and toilet innovation linked worldwide? What can we understand from the toilet gods in multiple cultures? What is the future of the toilet? How is Germany’s toilet culture linked to its economy?

The conference

“The House of Beautiful Business is a membership-based global think tank and community. Through online programming, gatherings, media, and partnerships, we bring together business and nonprofit leaders, technologists, scientists, philosophers, and artists who share a common quest: to shape a more beautiful vision for the future of business, technology, and humanity, built on emotions, ethics, and aesthetics instead of efficiency, extraction, and exponentialism.”