Migration of Form
Migration of Form is a long-term project conceived by artists Alia Farid and Jesús Bubu Negrón in 2013 and later developed by Farid and political scientist Clara Dublanc.
The project is a study on a series of migrations from the Middle East to the Caribbean and resulting translations and creolisation of form, particularly architecture. The end result is an ongoing series of tapestries commemorating the under-told history of Middle Eastern migration to the Caribbean. Each tapestry depicts a mosque or community space which can be found across the region (amongst both islands and continental Caribbean). This is achieved by developing a dialogue and engagement with multiple Muslim communities across the region and inviting them to photograph their places of prayer/congregation/social interaction, as spaces where part of their identity and heritage is formed and sustained. The photographs subsequently travel to the Middle East, where weavers develop their own interpretation using photographs as a point of departure and translating the photographic information into woven work.
The project explores the dialogue, interpretation and cultural contagion that happens, on one side on the contextualization in the Caribbean region of the traditional style and proportions of Middle Eastern architectural sites of prayer, and subsequently the translation that the weavers apply for the design of the tapestries. The accumulation and sedimentation of reinterpretation generate new imagery that has a vocabulary of its own, drawing on aesthetic elements of both regions but remaining nonetheless independent. The tapestries become a bridge that support a diasporic sense of cohesion to its’ imagined community’
Migration of Form is a long-term project conceived by artists Alia Farid and Jesús Bubu Negrón in 2013 and later developed by Farid and political scientist Clara Dublanc.
The project is a study on a series of migrations from the Middle East to the Caribbean and resulting translations and creolisation of form, particularly architecture. The end result is an ongoing series of tapestries commemorating the under-told history of Middle Eastern migration to the Caribbean. Each tapestry depicts a mosque or community space which can be found across the region (amongst both islands and continental Caribbean). This is achieved by developing a dialogue and engagement with multiple Muslim communities across the region and inviting them to photograph their places of prayer/congregation/social interaction, as spaces where part of their identity and heritage is formed and sustained. The photographs subsequently travel to the Middle East, where weavers develop their own interpretation using photographs as a point of departure and translating the photographic information into woven work.
The project explores the dialogue, interpretation and cultural contagion that happens, on one side on the contextualization in the Caribbean region of the traditional style and proportions of Middle Eastern architectural sites of prayer, and subsequently the translation that the weavers apply for the design of the tapestries. The accumulation and sedimentation of reinterpretation generate new imagery that has a vocabulary of its own, drawing on aesthetic elements of both regions but remaining nonetheless independent. The tapestries become a bridge that support a diasporic sense of cohesion to its’ imagined community’
