Wearable device, interactive performance, video (2014)
Commissioned by Edge of Arabia, UK

Yarn-dez-vous is a tactic cartography questioning what constitutes the geography of Middle Eastern and Islamic Art. The project takes the form of a wearable quilt featuring textiles from the MENA region and the United States. This fabric was chosen to map the identities, migration, and cultural encounters of its participants (wearers of the quilt). The quilt’s hexagons and stars can be transformed into individual letterman’s jackets and vice versa: the jackets unzip flat into geometric elements that fold into the larger quilt. The project name is a portmanteau word that combines the words “yarn” and “rendez-vous.” “Yarn” is both a thread and a story while “rendez-vous” refers to a meeting or a romance.

Project participants were asked to bring textiles from the places of their residence featuring the color code of the Sadu (Arabic weaving), which were combined with textiles from Boston. Twelve jackets were then made with these hybrid textiles. The project is in the state of an ongoing transformation and customization, developing personal logos, letters and stars, to be embroidered onto the jackets. Some jackets may be further transformed into variations on tunics, kaftans, abayas, dresses and shirts, inspired from East and West. The ongoing project will exhibit changes in color and pattern as it grows, becoming a map of the path taken by the transcultural participants as they offer their own cloth contributions.

Wearable device (2014)
Commissioned by the Festival New Hamburg, German Theater, Hamburg, DE

Wanderjahre #2 [Journeyman Years] is the second in a series of cultural mobility projects highlighting the immigrant as a transmitter of ornaments, knowledge, and skills. This site-specific installation produced for the festival New Hamburg organized by the German national theatre in Veddel, the immigrant quarter of Hamburg. The project is a modern laptop bag that can be transformed into an Islamic prayer rug, the material of which come from reused Journeyman pants, evoking the European tradition of wandering journeyman and their role as keepers and transmitters of cultural knowledge. The bag was fabricated in the “Original Veddel,” one of the last still-working ateliers that produce traditional custom-made working gear. The project links this tradition, with its European roots, to the new generation of cultural migrants in the global context.

Project commissioned by the Municipality of Altach as “Percentage for the Arts” project within the Islamic Cemetery Altach by Bernardo Bader, Altach.

Materials: Stainless steel mesh curtains, wooden shingles, new wool hand-woven carpets (flat-weave)

Dimensions: Curtains 300 x 300 x 290 cm; Carpets: 600 x 100 x 110 cm

Concept and design: Azra Akšamija

Research: Dietmar Offenhuber (conceptual contributions), Bernardo Bader (materials)

Production: Eva Grabherr (project management and mediation), Attila Dincer (spokesperson of the Islamic Community in Vorarlberg); Bernardo Bader (architecture of the cemetery and implementation); Thomas Marte (construction manager); Eberle Metall (metal work and shingles); Amila Smajović and the Association For The Protection Of The Bosnian Carpet (carpet weaving)

Financing: Municipalities and the Regional Government of Vorarlberg, Land Vorarlberg, donations of the Islamic Communities of Vorarlberg

Photographs: Adolf Bereuter

Also see: “Islamic Cemetery Altach, Austria,” in Architecture of Life: Aga Khan Award for Architecture 2013, edited by Mohsen Mostafavi, 198–215. Zurich: Lars Muller Publishers, 2013.

Installation (2012)
Commissioned by Onomatopee, Eindhoven, NL

This project gathers together a collection of anti-Muslim signs used by Islamophobic groups in Western Europe and appropriates them to create a multicultural response. The design of the signs evokes the system of isotypes used on public roads and transport systems. Against the essentialist grain of the isotype, we produce signs that simultaneously tag Islamophobic movements and warn against them, much as traffic isotypes warn about traffic conditions. The notion of threat and warning is thereby questioned: what do we really need to be alarmed about? Is it the mosques being built or the protests against them?

Installation (2012)
Commissioned by the Architectural Forum Upper-Austria (afo), Linz, AT
Co-authored with Joel Lamere

Unity Textile Muqarnas is a textile structure based on Islamic muqarnas, stalactite-like decorative three-dimensional elements found in Islamic monuments. The structure is hung from the neo-Gothic archway of the exhibition’s entrance. The modular structure of the muqarnas has been transformed and sewn together into a complex whole to signalize the need for a transcultural aesthetic characterized by a formal experimentation and enrichment through cultural interactions.