This summer, CAMPLE LINE is delighted to present Murmuration, an exhibition of new and recent works in embroidery and textile by Palestinian artist Majd Abdel Hamid which explores recurring concerns in his practice: memory, trauma, time and repair. 

Whilst borrowing from Palestinian embroidery traditions, Abdel Hamid’s needlework is self-taught. His work is invariably handmade, small in scale, intended to be easily portable, and he typically works in series, some of which extend over a number of years. His projects arise in response to memories or aspects of his own lived experience as well as the experiences and testimonies of others, often as a means to record or resist the impacts of traumatic contexts or events. Recently he has made a series of abstract embroideries that track the slow growth of a succulent plant over several months, drawing subtle parallels between natural survival strategies or patterns of movement and the emotional and political landscapes of human life.

The exhibition’s title – Murmuration – invokes the extraordinary phenomenon of collective bird behaviour that is defensive, protective and adaptive, extending these parallels further. The exhibition itself builds upon a sense of departure in Abdel Hamid’s practice recently described by curator Adomas Narkevičius: ‘not an erasure or a resolution but an opening towards what remains possible. It is a meditation on how everyday acts of making may partake in the understated project of continuity, possibility, quiet joy, and life.’ 

A newly commissioned essay by Francis McKee accompanies the exhibition.