Nura Husseini
Small Fragments (2019)
wood, vellum, paper, ink, thread, fabric, ribbon, book board, found objects
NFS
“I am a Chicago-based designer, artist, curator, and educator from Ramallah, Palestine. Much of my work centers on the intersection of identity, memory, fantasy, and belonging, all stemming from a socio-political perspective. I explore personal experiences while grappling with multiple identities and deconstruct enforced ideologies through modes of archival storytelling. I work with traditional crafts, motifs, and artistic customs, such as Palestinian embroidery, and explore how they build cultural narratives.
I work with found family documentation to discover a sense of belonging and understand the components of both chosen and imposed identities. Beginning with my family tree, I noticed that the names of women were excluded: through my recent projects, I address women in my past, beginning with my paternal grandmother. Using found family footage, I explore the juxtaposition between reality and memory, truth and fiction, and space and time through rotoscope animation and light projection. Specifically, I investigate the domestic space as an imposed environment for the female body, and how, through the larger political context, it transforms into a ‘waiting room’. I’m interested in how this perpetual state of waiting manifests into the corporeal environment of the domestic space, and how objects, space, and bodies reflect on this state.”
© Nura Husseini