Gabriela Awad

Studio Art and Middle Eastern Studies major

I started weaving on the loom five years ago. As soon as I pulled weft against warp, my body fell into a natural rhythm. I kept pulling back and forth.

Weaving is a process of uncovering. Pulling together, pulling apart. I understand that fiber is spun from wool, but I also know that wool becomes yarn which becomes a rug which becomes a home. The end result is a conglomeration of imprints: moments taken from the processes that make the textile and the places the textile has lived and the people who have felt the textile in their hands. If you move quickly enough, you might feel a point of warmth. It's almost like your hands are touching.

Hilaane's Rug

mixed media (textile)

Jewett Gallery

My year-long thesis project examines the tradition of textiles in Lebanon and the way in which this tradition has ebbed and flowed throughout the diaspora. Through familiarizing myself with the methods, uses, and meanings behind traditional Lebanese weaving practices, I came to the understanding that the handicrafts of Lebanon are not unlike the people of Lebanon. They exist at the vertex of Lebanese identity: survival. Decades of crisis and war and colonialism and occupation, but also thousands of years of teaching your daughter to dress the loom the same way your mom taught you to dress it. Beautifully intricate patterns and images and a color so red so vibrant, it makes you rethink how you see the sun.

Ultimately, I aim to understand how textiles have become a vehicle for my family's survival in both the past and present. My work is centered around a rug that existed in my great grandmother's home. Through replicating this textile, I work through the ways in which the meaning of the rug has changed over time and through immigration. The rug I work with is not the same rug my dad grew up with, but a new textile that is informed by my own perspective. Although the rug is altered and changed through this lens, the rug also delineates the history of my family, navigating the divide in our home. My woven piece seeks to convey this history. Through an installation that reflects the room the rug lived in, I hope to recreate a version of my great grandmother's house that my dad can come home to.

I weave to remember endurance; I weave to commemorate resilience. Textile becomes home, textile becomes memory, textile becomes healing. Through textiles, we survive.

I created this project for my dad. He has provided for me for 23 years. I wanted to do the same for him.

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