Highlights from 2025 part 3
My quilt The Red Sea was selected for the exhibition Poisson d'Avril, Nantes, France,
organised by Gudusi. The work needed to include embroidered fish by Afghan Women.
During archaeological excavations, small glass bottles in the shape of fish, probably for perfume, were discovered less than 20 km from Laghmani. Ancient Rome had made it that far! One of these fish is displayed at the Musée des Arts Asiatiques – Guimet in Paris. These glass fish bottles, along with many other objects (in gold), make up the treasure of Bagram, dated from the first to the second century AD.
There are the tumultuous waters that flow down from the
Panjshir Valley with the Hindu Kush in the background, not far from the Shomali
plain where the embroiderers live. This mountain river doesn’t provide the fish
recently offered on the capital’s stalls. Those come from two aquaculture sites
to the south of Kabul. But who can afford to buy these fish? Not the
embroiderers, for whom this animal remains an unaffordable exotic. Several
small ponds are scattered across the villages. These water reserves bring a bit
of coolness, and in their green waters swim orange fish: the only fish the
embroiderers have ever seen.
This animal is somewhat known, largely invented, and
reveals to us the fabulous imagination of embroiderers, a field—probably the
only one—where anything goes! Our subject is called Poisson d’ Avril that will
be held in April 2025 in Nantes."
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| The Red Sea |
Under the hot water, the world seemed strange.
The light bathed everything in a blood-red glow. The fish swam silently. The
seabed, covered with black, burning sand, seemed as if the ocean was in the
grip of a secret fever. The corals bent and twisted, as if struggling to
survive in the unbearable heat. The sea carried within it a raw power, an
energy that could explode at any moment, like a dormant volcano waiting to
reach its peak.
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| The Red Sea, detail |
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