Ode to a Rich Textile of Family History

Dina Nazmi Khorchid, Land, Untitled 2

Material Progress Artist Dina Nazmi Khorchid’s Artwork Mines the Vein of Her Past 

By Nia Dorsey

In our current moment, the future often takes precedence over the present. Innovation takes the public eye. Yet, the work of Dina Nazmi Khorchid (b. 1987, Kuwait) is a refreshing ode to memory and the past. Before the opening of Material Progress at Show Up, I spoke with Khorchid about her work, her past, and our collective future.

While Khorchid is a graduate of RISD and is currently a practicing artist in Rhode Island, she most acutely identifies as a refugee and a member of the Palestine diaspora. She is a third-generation Palestinian refugee, an artist, and daughter of a disappeared casualty of the Gulf War. While she has experienced multitudes of grief and loss, she refuses to run from her memories. Instead, through her beautiful prints and jacquard-woven pieces, Khorchid gives a voice to loss itself: allowing that which has come to pass to be shared with others and to show its beauty. 

Dina Nazmi Khorchid, I Put a Screen Between Us to Face Loss Less Profoundly, 2

Khorchid’s work evokes important moments of her life in patterns and choice of materials. In “I Put a Screen Between Us to Face Loss Less Profoundly, 2” Khorchid has screen printed a repeating avian pattern boldly in black and red ink onto cotton fabric at a large scale. This imagery repeats in Khorchid’s work, referencing her father’s last letter. He wrote, “Dina (3 y/o) is growing up and becoming more mature every day, she has the tongue and intellect of an adult. Just yesterday, she drew a pigeon (or a dove) followed by other drawings for the family.” She says this letter has persisted with her and influenced her work. 

This particular pattern continues within works of similar titles. Each piece differs in size, definition, and color. Each work seems to portray the echoing of a memory, sometimes sharp and saturated and at other moments lingering in the mind, almost forgotten. 

Dina Nazmi Khorchid, I Put a Screen Between Us to Face Loss Less Profoundly, 4

Another motif Khorchid includes is a tile that she collected from her apartment wall in Beirut, which collapsed in the 2020 explosion. She places this tile alongside a different image of a pigeon, in “Resting Pigeons on Collapsed Tiles.” She speaks of the “heavy” loss of her home and how she knew she had to include a piece of the space in her work. The pigeon in this work differs from the previous series. This pigeon rests on the tile and disturbs the already-present pattern. The tile fades in and out of the woven piece and mustard-colored dots are the only persistent pigment. The pigeon serves as a beacon for hope and connection “resting” on an artifact of what once was. 

Dina Nazmi Khorchid, Resting Pigeon on Collapsed Tiles

Khorchid continues investigating the vagueness of memory and the idea of place in her most recent projects. The work, “Land, Untitled 2,” disputes the assumptions made of landscape. Khorchid questions memory and knowing by layering sheer prints of trees reflected in water, accompanied by charcoal etchings. Her additions further distort the original images but ultimately produce something both familiar and unrecognizable. The distortion through addition gives the work a weight contrasted by the airy nature of blue and yellow fabrics and the frayed bottom edge. However, Dina tells me that these, “puddles of water, [are] perhaps a river flowing into the ground with oil spills.” She contrasts the viewer’s possible reading of a shaded landscape with the reality of a carefully constructed scene.

Khorchid’s work asks the viewer to confront their memories and the past in a new way through her use of recurring motifs and erasure through distortion. She encourages the viewer to recognize and embrace those messy, terrifying, and difficult moments of love and loss, so that we may create something beautiful in remembrance. In this moment of global political distress and conflict, Khorchid finds that an understanding, a study of, and a meditation on what we have lost is the only way to gain any future.

Dina Nazmi Khorchid, On Repeat -- The Stare

Dina Nazmi Khorchid, Untitled

Dina Khorchid’s work is currently on view as part of “Material Progress” at ShowUp from September 9 through December 1, 2024.