Sacred objects

Nour Hage’s ‘Talismanic Series’ is inspired by amulets that were historically created by women in the Levant

WORDS BY AIDAN IMANOVA

During her research fellowship at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, where she explored textile and jewellery collections from the Middle East, Nour Hage stumbled upon a book on amulets. “Most of them were necklaces and bracelets from the Levant, specifically from Palestine. I had never seen anything like that before,” the British-Lebanese designer and artist recalls. They were a patchwork of different beads and coins, she describes, together with seashells and little bones. These could be pieces women had found in fields or archaeological sites, or things they bought or were given, but to Hage they were also remnants and symbols of centuries of empires, cultures and ethnicities that have passed through the Levant. You could make out Ottoman and Austrian coins, as well as Venetian beads. “All these different objects were believed to have talismanic powers to protect people, but were also a piece of history,” says Hage. “They were objects created by women and inherited from mother to daughter or grandmother to granddaughter. I also found this fascinating.” Out of this fascination, Hage created three textile art pieces that became talismanic objects in their own right.

Hage studied fashion design at the Parsons School of Design in Paris and, following stints at Elie Saab and Oscar de la Renta, she went on to work for Croatian-born, Paris-based fashion designer Damir Doma, where she predominantly designed menswear. However, due to issues with her paperwork, Hage was compelled to return to Beirut in 2012, where she found herself with limited options. The established fashion brands did not suit her style and the emerging brands were not in a position to hire. In 2013, Hage established her own eponymous fashion brand. A year later, she was awarded the coveted Boghossian Foundation Prize.

Previous page: ‘My Umuma’, 60.5x211 cm, cotton fabric and yarn, scrim, wood dowel. Right: Nour Hage

Upon moving to London, Hage decided to focus solely on menswear – which women continued to buy – that was inspired by traditional Middle Eastern clothing, featuring either soft or unstructured silhouettes, and a play on length. The brand’s success led to sales across North America, Japan and the Middle East – then the pandemic hit. “I paused my design practice a year and a half ago,” she recounts. A year before that, Hage got commissioned for her first textile art piece by the Arab British Centre in London, and on the back of that came the V&A Fellowship.

“All of this was happening at the same time and then the pandemic and the Beirut explosion happened, [and it] all kind of shifted the way I was looking at things and it made me realise that first, I have always designed my collections more like an artist than a designer. And I realised that I have been enjoying that process much more. And it also made me realise that I couldn’t relate to the fashion industry anymore,” she says.

Hage’s ‘Talismanic Series’ – the beginning of an ongoing body of textile work – includes three pieces. ‘My heart is peaceful, my body is warm’ is made using natural indigo dyes, gold foil cotton yarn, metal bells, silver braided yarn and agate beads, while ‘My Umuma’ is a textile reconstruction that mimics the lines and effects of the different tones and shades of a white agate stone – a stone that was believed to protect a young mother during her pregnancy. The last piece, ‘Running around mother, happy’ is created in shades of black, believed to deter the evil eye away from children. All the works have been created by hand, by Hage herself. “[The pieces] took a lot of time and were very physically intense to create; and that is intentional because I wanted to reference the hard, manual labour that women have put into creating textiles,” she says. The ‘Talismanic Series’ pieces are themselves objects of protection, she says. They have been created to act in that way, with Hage using fabrics and materials from her studio as a way of carrying over her design practice into her art practice, as a metaphor of a past life. “If you believe that this object is going to protect you or is going keep away bad energy or help you through a tough time, then it’s that belief, that you put into the objects, that is talismanic,” she concludes. id

Above: ‘My heart is peaceful, my body is warm’, 181.5x130 cm, natural indigo dyed linen, wool, gold foil cotton yarn, metal bells, silver braided yarn, agate beads, polyester thread, viscose thread, wood dowel. Next page: ‘Running around mother, happy’, 132x217 cm, Piñatex, wool, cotton yarn, wood dowel

Fantasy and reality

Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art presents the first solo show of Jordan Nassar, who reinterprets traditional Palestinian craft

WORDS BY KARINE MONIÉ

Some encounters have a long-lasting impact on a creative journey. This was the case for self-taught artist Jordan Nassar. Born in 1985 of Palestinian descent, Nassar grew up in New York City – where he is currently based – and was surrounded in his household by the motif of Tatreez, a matrilineal tradition of cross-stitching, which is deeply rooted in the history and culture of Palestine. Traditionally, the wearer’s social and familial status, as well as their different stages of life, could be identified through the colours, patterns and designs of the Tatreez. Connected to the ideas of nostalgia, nationality and heritage since the end of the 1940s, these motifs have been part of Nassar’s work since his meeting with women-led embroidery collectives across Ramallah, Hebron and Bethlehem; collectives whom he now collaborates with. The artist’s first solo show – on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston until 29 January 2023 – features embroidered works on a monumental scale (as well as recent creations in wood and glass mixed media).

Represented by James Cohan Gallery in New York, Anat Ebgi Gallery in Los Angeles and The Third Line in Dubai, Nassar reinterprets a key aspect of his culture in his own way. The result is visually subtle yet powerful, captivating yet mysterious, rhythmic yet harmonious.

“Nassar’s work, with its complex patterning and painterly attention to form and colour, elevates our understanding of craft traditions as long-standing and deeply meaningful forms of art,” says curatorial assistant Anni Pullagura.

Titled ‘Fantasy and Truth’ in reference to the melancholic poetry collection A Tear and a Smile (1914) by Lebanese writer Gibran Khalil Gibran (1883-1931), the show comprises Nassar’s largest works to date. Each made of 57 individual panels in a variety of warm and cool colours, sizes and shapes, ‘Song of the Flowers’ and ‘Lament of the Field’ abstractly and geometrically evoke a sun rising over a blue mountain and a moon shining across a red valley.

Through his mesmerising artworks made in collaboration with a Palestinian embroidery collective based in the West Bank, Nassar explores what home, land and memory mean and represent – especially in one’s imagination. “I like to discuss these landscapes as versions of Palestine as they exist in the minds of the diaspora who have never been there and can never go there,” says Nassar. “They are the Palestine I heard stories about growing up, halfmade of imagination. They are dreamlands and utopias that are colourful and fantastical – beautiful and romantic, but bittersweet.” Interested in starting conversations through his art, Nassar has developed a rich visual language that goes beyond aesthetics to tackle the complexity of reality and identity.

Photography by Mel Taing

Previous page: Jordan Nassar, Third Family Pentagon, 2022. Spanish cedar, white oak, hemlock, hard maple, Chinese elm, purple heart, fi gured black walnut, African mahogany, black locust, brass and mother of pearl, 30 × 38 × 1 inches (76.2 × 96.5 × 2.5 cm). Private collection, New York. Thia page: Jordan Nassar, Fantasy and Truth, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2022–2023