Memories and Preservation with Hazara artist Latifa Attaii

Attaii’s work is perhaps, first and foremost, about identity. Almost all of her work is embroidery, which she says she was drawn to as a way to connect with her culture, history and ethnicity as an Hazara Afghan. The history of the Hazara people is truly tragic. At the end of the 19th century, Afghan King Abdur Rahman Khan set out to bring various regions under his control. Facing resistance, he proceeded on a violent genocide campaign to kill all Hazaras in Afghanistan, murdering around 63% of the Hazara population by the end of the campaign. Since then Hazaras have been subject to huge amounts of discrimination and targeted murders, both within Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan.

“My uncle was killed so that's why my family were forced to migrate to Pakistan. So my works are all about everything that I have experienced, my own stories and my family's stories. And the embroidery element that I have added to my work: in Afghanistan in every household you can see that all the women know how to do embroidery. It was a must-do thing for women. They were doing embroidery pieces of clothes for their kids, for their husband and everybody at home or sometimes they were just helping bring in the family income by doing these embroideries and getting paid for it. So I was raised seeing people doing embroidery all around me, my sisters, my mother and all.” 

In Afghanistan, when a girl reaches marrying age - 13, 14, 15 - she has to have a complete embroidered dowry for herself. She should have many shirts embroidered for her husband, a husband who could be anyone. They don't yet know their husband, but they have to complete handkerchiefs for in-laws, the cushions, the pillows, the pillow covers, everything. 

“I was talking to my sisters and other girls and the thing that fascinated me then was how these embroidery pieces are not just embroideries. It isn't just a cloth that is embroidered. The girl who doesn't know who her husband is going to be is embroidering all her feelings: hope for the future life, the fears that she may have from the unknown husband, the hope, fears, love, hatred in everything, all the senses that she has at the moment. She's stitching all of those things in that piece of embroidery and at the end it isn’t just a beautiful piece of clothing. It's all her thoughts. It's all her feelings, hopes and everything.

I was also thinking about how when I was a kid, my siblings and I, we used to go carpet weaving. I was maybe six or seven. My sister was eight and the other was 10. So we all used to go to the carpet weaving factory just to help my family. We all were working and we did it for a few years; a lot of my childhood. We used to go early in the morning until evening. Years later, when I was in university, we were talking about embroideries. At that moment, I had a flashback to my own childhood when I was going to carpet weaving and I thought about it, about those childhood days on the way to work; I may had seen a beautiful doll and a nice dress in a window shop and I wanted them, I may have weaved all those little wishes of mine into those carpets. I may have thought of my future and attached all my hopes and fears with each knot into those carpets. So that was part of the story of how embroidery fascinated me and why I wanted to make it a huge part of my work.”

This made me think of a similar conversation I had with Sri Lankan artist Hema Shironi. Similar to Attaii, she spoke about embroidery and how you put your own memories and desires into the work you are creating. Interestingly, these two artists, who both focus on needlework, are the only two who have phrased their artistic practice in this way.

Attaii then proceeded to show me one of the gorgeous pieces she was currently working on. She says that the process really calms her down. With the never-ending news cycles, bringing horror from all parts of the world, focusing on these traditional embroidery motifs, keeps her focus elsewhere. She recalls a story she heard from a friend: 

“She told me that once there was a woman, back in the old ages, whose husband had to go to war. They didn't know when the war would end, so this lady decided to embroider a shirt for her husband and she told her husband that she wouldn't complete this shirt until he was back home. The husband was taking so long to come back home so she was stitching the shirt during the day time and unstitching it at night because she did not want to complete his shirt until he had returned home. This story, the stitching and unstitching and doing this again and again and again really touched me and I remember it whenever I am stitching a piece”

We discussed the importance of working by hand, as opposed to the machine, and how that gives time for contemplation and stitching meaning into your work. Attaii doesn’t want her work to be too prescriptive. A lot of her work is ‘untitled’ and she says that she doesn’t wish to put a glass to the viewer's eyes and force them to see the work in a particular way. However, one of her works does have a title and, in my opinion, it is one of her most moving pieces. ‘A Thousand Individuals’ is a series of photographic portraits that have been stitched upon to obscure the faces beneath. Attaii started the work as part of her university thesis with just a couple of hundred portraits. Now, six years later, she has reached over 2000. 

“So that thousand individuals - the title that I gave - was because it's about individuals. It can be anyone. I didn't really like to specify that it’s about Hazaras, Afghans, Iranians or any specific ethnicity. It’s about anyone. Every individual can relate to those works. I have tried to hide their faces, yet you could partly see them through those cotton threads, but you can't really say who that person is. I am hiding their identity and yet giving them a new identity, they are someone and also they could be no one.”

For the initial project, Attaii took almost all the photographs herself. She spoke with each individual, heard their stories, took their portrait then brought the photos home to work on. But as the project progressed and she needed to create another thousand for an exhibition in Switzerland, she had to ask photographer friends who were still in Afghanistan to take portraits for her. By this time the Taliban had taken over and there was no way she could re-enter the country of her birth. She also took some of her own portraits of the Hazaras and Afghans who were living in Iran at the time. She began the project with Hazaras in mind, but now she is in Iran, her Hazara identity is considered second to her identity as an Afghan refugee. So she broadened the scope of the project to all the individuals with whom she shared a common history, or a common land. 

When I asked whether she censored her work in any way, she spoke about the ‘A Thousand Individuals’ project and the way in which the embroidery over the faces could be considered a kind of censorship. 

“When I was doing this photography for the thousand individuals in my work, the women that I have in my work - most of them didn't want their face to be shown publicly in galleries and on social media and everywhere. So the reason that they agreed to have their photographs taken was that they knew the whole idea of the work - that their faces would be covered and no one would recognise them. It isn’t really easy to work on a community-based project in a male dominated society like Afghanistan.” 

Of course, being a woman is another identity that Attaii feels is important in her work. Not only did it expose her to needlework from a young age, it is also something that she is faced with on a daily basis, living where she does in a patriarchal society. Some of her early work, showing women with red and black flowers embroidered on their faces, was about femininity within a male-dominated society. On the other hand, another important reason for embroidering over the faces in her portraits, is the idea of protection. 

“While I was doing my research on textile and embroidery, I came across a topic in one of the books that said that in the past they used to use embroidery as a means of protection. People used to believe that the design of the embroidery matters and if they have these embroideries on their clothes then it is going to protect them from the devil eye, from monsters, from everything that they were afraid of. That's why in history you can see that a lot of brides and grooms, in their wedding dress, have specific embroidery designs on their clothes. They also used to stitch specific embroidery designs in particular parts of the clothes (such as the over the heart) to protect these body parts. Often this was on the clothes of newborn babies because they believe that brides and babies are the main targets of the devil eyes. So, since I'm talking about Hazara’s not being safe, Hazara’s being targeted, all these killings and discrimination and everything. By covering their faces with these embroideries, I try to use that myth of protection.”

I love the symbolism in Attaii’s work. Not only are they incredibly beautiful works of art in their own right, once you learn more about Attaii’s motivations and experiences, they take on another level of meaning. Another example of this is in her early work, which saw her embroider patterns onto banknotes. Initially she had just been experimenting with different materials, stitching on various paper surfaces rather than cloth. The patterns she stitches are traditional Hazara designs so, when she stitched onto a banknote, she felt like she was taking some Hazara identity and bringing it into a national conversation. 

“Even making those, I was thinking about the Hazara minorities in Afghanistan - the bank note is a national thing but then I was creating some traditional embroidery designs on it. This changes the real meaning and the use of currency notes and creates layers within. Layers of our lost identity and the struggle for it.”

Thank you to Latifa Attaii for a wonderful conversation!