Aya Haidar's 'Battlegrounds' at Tabari Artspace Portrays Women as Sites of Conflict

Tabari Artspace presents 'Battlegrounds,' the inaugural exhibition of Lebanese-British artist Aya Haidar, who is now represented by the gallery. The show runs from an unspecified date and features multimedia works that explore womanhood, invisible labor, forced displacement, and misogyny. Haidar, a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art (BA) and the London School of Economics (MSc in NGOs and Development), draws on her experiences as a mother, woman, artist, and humanitarian worker. The exhibition portrays women's bodies as battlegrounds, caught in crossfire under patriarchy and conflict. Textiles serve as the primary medium, with works including the 'I Felt It' series (2024), which transforms domestic objects like scourers and cleaning cloths into landscapes. Other pieces, such as 'Crossing Borders' (2024) and 'Overboard' (2024), use embroidery to narrate survivor stories from refugee camps. Large-scale tapestries like 'Vive La Révolution' (2024) and 'A Woman's Place' (2024) celebrate domestic laborers as 'Sheroes' and assert women's roles in revolution. The press release is from Tabari Artspace.