Mounira Al Solh: Embroidering Hidden Histories and Women's Stories

Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh (born 1978) creates hand-embroidered tents inspired by a 19th-century Qajar ceremonial tent owned by the Cleveland Museum of Art, originally made for Muhammad Shah. Her work 'A day is as long as a year' (2022), exhibited at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England, was a collaboration with 30 creatives including craftswomen from Beirut and asylum seekers from Turkey and Iran. The tent incorporates women's stories, including one from a person close to the 2020 Beirut explosion. Al Solh's ongoing project 'I strongly believe in our right to be frivolous' (since 2012) uses yellow legal pad paper to draw portraits and record experiences of refugees from Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia. She studied at Lebanese University (BFA painting) and Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and completed a residency at Rijksakademie. Her early work includes photographs of war-torn Beirut and a film about her father and his friends swimming. Al Solh currently splits time between Lebanon and the Netherlands.