After my Bedouin Grandmother: Thread as Architecture, Song as Home
12-14 June, 12-5pm
FreeJoin artist and architect Lobna Sana from the Naqab desert for three days of collective building, engaging in the story of woven architecture.
Hosted in our garden, the workshops draw on Bedouin Palestinian weaving traditions, particularly the Arisha structures once found in the wetlands of Lake Al-Houleh, where papyrus and reed weaving were deeply embedded in everyday domestic life and the ecosystem.
Like many life-sustaining landscapes in Palestine, Lake Al-Houleh has largely disappeared. Its people were displaced, its buffalo vanished, its waters drained and the papyrus that once grew there no longer exists.
At the heart of this project is a celebration of the women who built and sustained these architectures often without recognition. Grandmothers, mothers and neighbours gathered to build looms, collect dried papyrus from the marshes and weave homes. A home was understood as an extension of the land and water itself — something that, once no longer used, would return to the earth and decay naturally. Alongside the dried plants gathered from the wetlands, women passed down skills, songs, stories and ways of living through their hands.
Across the three workshop days, participants will work with a rebuilt mat loom traditionally used in Al-Houleh and experiment with weaving dried plants.
- Friday, 12 June: Building the loom from scratch
- Saturday, 13 June: Weaving, alongside poetry exercises exploring memory, home, song and water
- Sunday, 14 June: Weaving, closing with Lobna Sana reflecting on Palestinian weaving traditions and their relationship to architecture, homemaking and resistance
Each afternoon will include shared tea breaks - moments to rest and continue the conversations around the loom.
All welcome. No experience necessary.
With kind support from RESOLVE Collective and Material Store at Tipping Point East from where we sourced the wood for the looms.
Image: Documentation of weaving in the Naqab. Photo by Lobna Sana. Courtesy of the artist.
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Mosaic Rooms is generously supported by Al-Qattan Charitable Trust.
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