ABOUT

“Delicate threads draw colourful lines, circles and rays. They fill empty spaces, color the sky, mark the outlines of the buildings and the streets of a town in state of suspension. Solitary and silent figures, wrapped in an embrace of filaments and colourful bubbles, appear at once isolated and protected by them.

The artist Joana Choumali intervenes on the photographs she took with her smartphone in Grand-Bassam (Ivory Coast) in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in 2016. Through the meditative act of embroidery, chosen as a way to process and overcome the pain she felt at the time, she gives life to a different kind of imagery.

A gesture that is as much powerful as it is symbolic: to mend what had been torn, to reconstruct beauty where only desolation appears to be left. Most importantly, to stop and take the time to contemplate and process the feelings, the emotional response to the situations life presents us with."

— from the Introduction by Maria Pia Bernardoni