This work reflects cultural diversity as a lived experience through the material and symbolic language of textiles. It incorporates a fragment of a handwoven rug, an object tied to Azerbaijani tradition, storytelling, and intergenerational knowledge. Rugs are more than domestic objects; they embody cultural identity, mark important life rituals, and serve as carriers of ancestral memory. By cutting, unraveling, and integrating this fragment into a painted composition, I engage with the tension between continuity and disruption that accompanies migration and diaspora.
The process of unweaving threads mirrors the experience of displacement—histories pulled apart, fragmented, and reassembled in new contexts. At the same time, the act of reworking the rug into an artwork honors its endurance and adaptability, suggesting how traditions evolve when carried across geographies. The bold red and black surface evokes both erasure and persistence, a layered field where memory is inscribed and re-inscribed.
This work honors cultural diversity not as a static inheritance but as something dynamic, shaped by lived traditions, movement, and adaptation. It reflects how diasporic identities hold multiple realities at once: the longing for preservation, the inevitability of change, and the creative potential of hybridity.
By integrating craft techniques historically practiced by women into the language of contemporary art, the work also challenges hierarchies between “art” and “craft,” and recognizes the importance of textile traditions as cultural expressions. In doing so, it offers a space where personal and collective histories meet, uniting past and present through material, memory, and resilience.