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Mounira Al Solh

My specialty was to make a peasants’ haircut, but they obliged me work till midnight often

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Mounira Al Solh, My specialty was to make a peasants’ haircut, but they obliged me work till midnight often, 2017, Hand and machine-stitched embroideries, Dimensions variable. Art Jameel Collection. Photo by Mohamed Somji.

Artwork Details

Artist

Mounira Al Solh

Title

My specialty was to make a peasants’ haircut, but they obliged me work till midnight often

Date

2017

Medium

Hand and machine stitched embroideries

Dimensions

Variable

Credit Line

Art Jameel Collection

Work Description

Mounira Al Solh’s work focuses around two themes central to her practice; the violent and sometimes absurd force of political events on personal lives, and the form and function of language and meaning making. My specialty was to make a peasants’ haircut but they obliged me to work till midnight often is a series of hand and machine stitched embroideries featuring excerpts from conversations between the artist and refugees in Lebanon and Europe. The first time her work features embroidery, Al Solh believes that stitching could also bind people; the threads can connect but also push apart. The work documents the people she conversed with, along with their family, surroundings, aspirations and the things the Syrian war took away from them.

Artist Biography

Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978) lives and works between the Netherlands and Lebanon.

Mounira Al Solh’s practice embraces painting, embroidery, performative gestures, video and video installations. Irony and self-reflectivity are central strategies for her work, which explores feminist issues, tracks patterns of microhistory, is socially engaged, and can be political and escapist all at once. Al Solh studied at the Lebanese University, Beirut, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam, and was resident at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam (2007-8). Her most recent exhibitions include solos at the Art Institute, Chicago (2018), SALT, Istanbul (2016), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014), plus participation in dOCUMENTA 14, Athens & Kassel (2017); 56th Venice Biennial, Italy (2015); New Museum, New York (2014); Homeworks, Beirut (2013); and the 2009 Istanbul Biennial.

Useful Links

Artist’s Rooms: Mounira Al Solh