Afghanistan with Love

One of the exhibitions at the Patchwork and Art Textiles Festival in Alsace was curated by Pascale Goldenberg, a French textile artist. She has spent the last 20 years working with Afghan women giving them an outlet for their highly skilled embroidery work. Most of the exhibition was made up of lots of small, beautifully, but simply, worked pieces all from scraps of white sheet. 

One of Pascale's own pieces was Courtyards (extra). This work is a homage to the rural Afghan women (but also the urban women) who only occasionally leave their courtyards. From there they see only the sky, as the courtyards are surrounded by high clay walls. (The buttons are a reference to an Afghan tradition of warding off the evil eye.)

There was a stall at the back of the church where pieces of embroidery made by Afghan women were for sale. The idea is that buying one of these and incorporating it in a piece of work is a form of uniting cultures. I bought this lovely piece and am now looking at how to use it - lots of colours to choose as a focus.