Majd Abdel Hamid – Texture of memory, 2024

Majd Abdel Hamid’s work is mainly structured around embroidery, a traditionally female craft in Palestine, which he taught himself. Majd Abdel Hamid favours small-format works, adapted to the scale of his hand and his constant departure. He composes abstract motifs based on personal memories and on images from the public and private spheres of his daily life. Working alone with simple materials, he has developed a compulsive and comforting practice that enables him to confront the tensions and conflicts that are shaking the modern world. Making, undoing and remaking — ways of warding off time and trying to come to terms with the world.

Texture of memory is an installation based on research into Lyon’s history as a textile town. It combines embroidery weaving, video and sculpture. Majd Abdel Hamid’s multidisciplinary work is inspired by the canuts, the traditional Lyon silk weavers, and the Jacquard loom they used in their work. He explores the machine’s binary programme written on a punched card to select the warp threads. The installation unfolds the memory of a daydream the artist had as a child, when he was “composing’’ music without playing it. Texture of memory invites viewers to imagine, in their turn and according to a non-binary and subjective code, the creation of a weaving from fabrics collected by the artist over the last fifteen years.