Great Grandmother’s Tattoos, 2025

230 × 150 cm
Digital illustration printed on cotton, hand-sewn, viscose fringes, hand-painted and carved wooden beam. Sewn by Jonas Jönsson

This double-sided carpet presents a fabulated portrait of my great-grandmother as a young woman in Raqqa, Syria. Installed to be walked around, each side shows different tattoo symbols drawn from her body.

The symbols refer to tattoo practices connected to Shawaya communities in Raqqa and the Euphrates region, where markings could signal status, protection, belonging, rite of passage, and tribal connection. By translating these marks into a textile portrait, the work holds and reimagines a cultural memory that was not fully preserved through formal archives.

The work is based on the only surviving photograph I have of my great-grandmother’s tattoos. From this image, I redraw, enlarge, and reposition the marks so they are no longer only details on a body, but become the structure of the carpet itself. The rug becomes a way to study these symbols through drawing, printing, sewing, and textile construction.