Great-grandmother’s Tattoos, 2025

230 x 150 cm

Digital illustration printed on cotton, hand-sewn, viscose fringes, hand-painted and carved wooden beam and sewn by Jonas Jönsssn.

This rug depicts an illustration of my great-grandmother at a young age, Inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s concept of critical fabulation, the project addresses the erasure of these embodied practices caused by globalization and cultural homogenization. By reviving these tattoos, once worn by Bedouin women like my great-grandmother from Raqqa, Syria, this project challenges colonial narratives that reduce such traditions to static artifacts of the past.