Leila Jabre Jureidini

Filiation

A Legacy Revisited

March 8 - April 5, 2023

 

“A deafening clattering roared as the doors opened into what seemed to be an endless hall. My father held my hand as we stepped into a sea of weaving looms that took up every inch of the room.

At six years old, the noise was like nothing I had heard before, or and nothing I have heard since… My hands instinctively covered my ears, but my eyes were transfixed, and I was mesmerized.

To this day, this childhood memory remains vivid in my mind.

Many years later, I was compelled to return to the now-closed “Spinning & Weaving Industrial Company”, my family’s factory, and to revisit my lucid yet ambiguous memories.

I found myself picking up bits and pieces, holding onto a past so far gone, yet so clear in my mind. These fragments told the story of my family’s legacy. As I sorted through these precious relics, I felt an unyielding urge to examine the stitches in the fabric of my past: to investigate the tools, the threads, the stitches that made up the formidable textiles so pivotal in my history, and to explore how cloth itself is key to History itself.

This project pays tribute to a personal heritage, honoring a family inheritance of a weaving factory. It is the story of my venture, a journey through many periods, exploring the process of weaving, integrating collected pieces along the way, describing my perception of the space, its physicality, and its emotional impact on me. I felt the need to pay tribute to the memory of this factory. As I integrated the weaving process into my paintings, I envisioned myself walking the path of my forefathers, intertwining my past and my future.”

- Leila Jabre Jureidini

 

“What is to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.”

- Gibran Khalil Gibran