And other monuments

And other monuments is an exhibition tracing the movement of the ‘Oriental rug’ and other orientalia in relation to colonial trade, imperial bordering, and power. The interactive exhibition includes a digital workbook, archival documents, a conversation on tatreez (Palestinian embroidery) with textile artist Samar Hejazi, and an intervention on the British Museum by multidisciplinary artist Roya DelSol. 
 
Placed alongside West Asian and Middle Eastern rugs, carpet bags, and other pieces from the Textile Museum of Canada’s permanent collection, And other monuments invites a reading of textiles as maps or guides which are capable of tracing broader relationships to who moves, what moves, and how transnational, globalized mobilities of goods have always relied on ‘immobilizations’ of people. Available both in-person and online, And other monuments offers threads and links to coloniality on our walls and under our feet.  

Looking to the colonial looting of Indigenous objects-made-artifacts that now adorn the walls of museums, Ariella Aisha Azoulay suggests “It is not possible to decolonize the museum without decolonizing the world,”; connecting the object to the material conditions that determine the lives of its makers. While not all Museum collections are retrieved through plunder, the journey of a textile into a museum may tell us as much about its social history as the knotting, dyes, and patterns which characterize it. Available both in-person and online, And other monuments offers threads and links to coloniality on our walls and under our feet.

And other monuments is curated by Mitra Fakhrashrafi, an emerging curator indebted to border abolition and interested in what art can tell us of borderlands and the violent histories that underpin them.

By channeling her ancestry through the historical choreography found in craft practices, Samar Hejazi’s practice observes the complex conversations between social constructivism, ethnology and the ethos of modernity.

Samar is a visual artist of Palestinian decent raised in diverse communities in the Middle East and North America. Samar uses her art to question conceptual ideas of self identification, social construction, ethnology, and intellectual traditions. These ideas are engaged in an ongoing way through her process and development of diverse materials and forms.

Take a closer look And other monuments on the Textile Museum of Canada App where you will still find all the works in this exhibition virtually.

Type: Exhibition

Date: Sep 15, 2021 - Jan 8, 2022

Curated by: Mitra Fakhrashrafi