Literature

Echoes of my alienation is a series of nine photographs printed on silk organza and embroidered with 100% cotton multi-colored thread. The echoes of my alienation series are inspired by Ghorba, a word in Arabic that describes the alienation I have longed to define—that feeling of culture shock, loneliness, and homesickness swarming everywhere and anywhere. Being a citizen of nowhere, I have been constantly defined by topography and its alienness. Every piece of me has felt that I needed to belong somewhere but I have been longing for somewhere else, a home for my soul. In these past few years, I have found that textiles have been where I belong, where that feeling of estrangement disappears. The act of embroidering, dyeing, and shaping textiles as if they were self-portraits was almost an act of shaping a home and my geography. Within these pieces, I lay the map of belonging and being found. Within these pieces, I map my true self.