arabic

Afia Rezk, a Syrian textile artist now living and working in Paris, creates large scale textile installations using traditional weaving techniques. Here she has combined woven textile with monotypes printed from textiles to create a haunting artist’s book meditating on her own personal narratives woven into text/ile. Afia Rezk was born in 1980. She arrived in France with her family in May 2018. From childhood, influenced by Syrian crafts, she has used organic elements, living materials in constant mutation under the effect of oxidation, reduction and biodegradation. Her plastic research combines painting, collage, print, ceramics, weaving and installation. She studied Arabic literature at Damascus University before turning to the visual arts; she worked extensively in Syria before fleeing the war, leading workshops in both art and theatre as interactive practices to help families in emergency situations, as well as children and female victims of war. She has exhibited in Syria, Lebanon, France, Sweden, Swi and Germany and is a member the Agency of Artists in Exile in France.

‘In the garden of our house in southern Syria, the olive trees were imbued with love and blessings. This small patch of land was the site of my daily rituals. Every morning, after my walk, I eagerly returned to slip behind the house into the shade of the olive trees. I would take off my shoes before entering, as if I were stepping into a sacred place. Under the trees, I breathed in serenity, as if the earth itself pulsed to my own rhythms. Often, my mother would join me with her maté, and together we would share precious moments and stories etched in my heart and memory.
Last July, approximately 36 villages were burned in my native region of Suwayda by armed groups affiliated with what is known as the ‘interim government’. Most of these houses had land planted with olive trees.
Burning an olive tree is like burning a memory, rituals, seasons, stories, and roots.
This work is an attempt to keep alive the trace of what remains. Les murmures de l’olivier’.