Stitched Stories

The series emerged from a six-week workshop in Belfast involving eleven people living within Northern Ireland’s asylum system and three local fashion designers. It begins with an ordinary yet politically charged material: second-hand clothing given to people seeking protection—garments that often neither fit their bodies nor reflected their cultural references, individual styles, or sense of self.

Working with what they had received, the participants cut, stitched, altered, and recomposed the garments, asserting control over how they wished to be seen. Each participant then selected a location in Belfast as the setting for their portrait, extending this act of self-representation from clothing into the city itself. The resulting photographs were printed on fabric, returning the image to the material from which it began: clothing becomes portrait, and portrait becomes cloth. What had been provided as an inadequate substitute for choice is transformed into a personal statement and a surface of authorship.

Portraits: Ahmed Osama (Sudan), Anfaal Almughallis (Yemen), Asraa al-Tmimi (Yemen), Hind Adnan Ali (Iraq), Mahsa Jahangirpour (Iran), Melav Rahim (Kurdistan), Omima Hasabelrsoul Ahmed (Sudan), Omaia Mortada Abdalla (Sudan), Raha Shafiei (Iran), Saba Barhoum (Syria), and Salwa Alsharabi (Yemen).