My current artwork, subverts the decorative craft of embroidery to confront the racialization, surveillance, and the dehumanizing of brown and Muslim bodies and the western distance from warfare. In my machine embroideries, the suspect is my son, I survey everyday moments with my son, his micro actions of seeking comfort and safety mirror to me the macro lense of our nation-state’s policies prompted by fear under the guise of national security. The use of machine embroidery in these works references the mechanization of surveillance technologies today.

machine embroideries

everyday suspects

I employ embroidery to speak to our surveillance state and reference the domestic disturbances experienced by individuals at sites of war/conflict through my series of hand embroideries, “everyday suspects.” The work situates my viewers in aerial, peripheral, and fish-eye lens targets of domestic and civil spaces, the benign and the personal; speaking to the pervasive government surveillance of Muslim American communities watched where they eat, work, and pray.

everyday suspects Installation View Chicago Artist Coaltion 2014	everyday suspects 02 12" x 12" X .5" hand embroidery on cotton 2014	everyday suspects 01 10" x 10" X .5" hand embroidery on cotton 2014
everyday suspects 03 12" x 12" X .5" hand embroidery on cotton 2014	everyday suspects 04 23" x 23" X .75" hand embroidery on cotton 2014	everyday suspects 06 23" x 23" X .75" hand embroidery on cotton 2014
everyday suspects 05 23" x 23" X .75" hand embroidery on cotton 2014	everyday suspects 05 detail Describe your image.	everyday suspects 04 detail Describe your image.
everyday suspects 07 23" x 23" X .75" hand embroidery on cotton 2017	everyday suspects 08 23" x 23" X .75" hand embroidery on cotton 2018