Through her mixed techniques, Hana Almilli successfully portrays the feeling of alienation and healing.
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Hana Almilli is a multimedia artist, textile designer, and poet based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In 2019, she graduated from California College of Arts, centering on Textiles and Creative Writing. Currently, she is engaged in the Master's program in Arts and Culture Management from Rome Business School, Italy.
Belonging to Turkish, Syrian, Kurdish, and Saudi lineage, she was persuaded by questions of identity. Hana’s research-based practice explores the idea of recreating affected and resurrected identities through the material culture of textiles and assemblages. Enquiring into perpetual alienation, her ideology developed into discovering, and representing the term Al Ghorba: estrangement in a foreign land or the feeling of homesickness.
Consequently, Hana’s visual structure interrogates nostalgia through weaving, dyeing, embroidering, and photography. Figures one and two, for instance, are part of her series The Echoes of my Alienation, in which she printed photographs on silk organza and then embroidered them with multi-colored 100% cotton threads.
It is through this dialogue of materials and techniques that, as spectators, we are invited to immerse ourselves in her interpretation of foreignity, self-exploration, and nostalgia. The attention to detail and craftsmanship that goes into each of her works, evidences her devotion to bringing together the universal experience of estrangement and the comfort and softness of healing memories.
Lakum Artspace is a multifunctional contemporary gallery that, designed with the community in mind, develops engaging, approachable, and supportive platforms for art professionals and art enthusiasts to learn, communicate, and create dialogue surrounding the true nature of art and design. More than an artspace, Lakum is one of its kind in Saudi Arabia to exist as a multifunctional hub that creatively compliments the current art scene in the country.
Cover image: Hana Almilli, Memoirs 02, 2019. Courtesy of Lakum Artspace
Written by: Zara Colombo
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