Son this is a waste of time (2015-ongoing)

2015-ongoing

Series of cross-stitch embroideries

white cotton threads on canvas

“These works reflect explicitly on the nature of labour. the larger of the pieces, entitled 400 hours, documents the time spent in the act of embroidering. There is a rich tradition of embroidery in Palestine, where the craft was historically used by women as a tool to articulate personal expression and is now a pre-eminent symbol of local heritage. As a Palestinian Artist Abdel Hamid is explicitly engaging with these paradigms,s, but in using uniquely white thread he bleaches the panels of representation, calling into questions the connection between labour and visual value. the work focuses instead of the repetitive gesture of the needle and the cumulative process of stitch-on-stitch.framing the works gives them an immediate structure that recalls the photograph- transporting the texture of the embroidered surface in the space of the image.”

text taken from the exhibition Unravelled, curated by Rachel Dedman and Marie Muracciole’