Fatq is “ripping, tearing apart, unstitching”. As the fabric of our world comes undone and falls frayed into a polarized mess, the first threads of a new pattern are able to appear.
This was the first in a series of pieces through which I’m processing the unfolding loss of the world I knew, heavy feelings tempered by the hope that a new and more wholesome story may emerge from the rubble.
The piece was fully knitted and blocked (soaked and stretched to dry) before being ripped back. This creates the curling in the yarn that shows the work was indeed complete before being destroyed, not merely left unfinished. While this was a very small sacrifice indeed in the grand scheme of things, it felt important to enact it to properly represent the subject.
The desolation of our world unraveling is tempered by the hope that a new story is able to take shape as the old crumbles: the crystalline pattern we glimpse is made up of genuine gold thread of the kind normally used to embroider kimono.
