20-02-2023 | Basket Weaving with Palm Leaves
Having enjoyed working with embroidery in previous years, and wanting to incorporate craft methods in a 3D format I used a youtube tutorial to learn how to start basket weaving. Using raffia, which is in fact the dried leaves of the palm tree - a plant established in the Persian Gulf thousands of years ago - I've started to make a series of coiled vessels in response to items from my family archive. Weaving relates back to the types of crafts used in bedouin communities to make functional items from available materials, that also offer aesthetic qualities to make the home or dwelling a welcoming space. As I worked I was reminded of recent reading on Michel Serres' theories of non-tradtitional time models. Percieving time not in linear chronological terms, but in ways that bring disparate events together - like the corners of a handkerchief being gathered up , or like kneading a dough or paste. In weaving the same occurs, and it struck me to be an apt methodology when considering the seemingly disparate aspects of my own family history. I also connected with the idea that I might be making new material for the archive. My father brings little in the way of physical matter to the family collection, rather it is the stories he imparts which keep his history alive. Weaving my basket vessels I feel I am making something in honour of him and his culture, that he might have something physical to supplement his rich storytelling.
Palm leaf vessels, Amanni Hassan Hollands, 2023
‘Steven Connor, Topologies: Michel Serres and the Shapes of Thought//2002’, in Nature, by Jeffrey Kastner (Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, 2012), pp. 44–49
