Aya Haider

Aya Haider

#1 Wish You Were Here Series, Postcard Collection 8

embroidery on vintage postcards

15.2 by 10.2 cm. 6 by 4 in.

Executed in 2016

Tabari Artspace, Dubai

A collection of 100 used postcards salvaged from personal dialogues from addresses across Europe find new meaning in these works through hand embroidery. Each subtle intervention presents a social commentary reflecting the current socio-political landscape of the region.

Haidar contends that while postcards serve to highlight the beauty of a city or landscape they never seem to present the whole reality. The composition of the postcard images are so well framed and immaculate that such embroidered interventions serve to broaden the lens towards a more realistic insight of the current socio-political context.

Beautiful shots of the Mediterranean coast are carefully altered to include rubber dinghies carrying refugees towards shore or gorgeous piazzas play host to a multitude of tented settlements or protests. The embroidered additions take such stagnant images and pull them into a current discourse of border politics amidst an ever-escalating refugee crisis.

The title, Wish You Were Here, has a direct relational association to postcards and highlights the link that postcards have to 'home' or a sense of 'longing for home'. The irony of the pun intended, that someone would 'wish they were there' when considering the stark reality of what is being represented.

Each embroidered postcard is unique and presents its own narrative. They are presented as an installation, onto rotating postcard stands, for the audience to navigate around and intimately view and reflect on the reality that each postcard presents.