Promise

Promise (embroidery, Ժանյակ, watercolor)

Promise was created in 2023 as a long-distance collaboration with one of my best friends, an organizer and educator of Palestinian and Armenian ancestry - despite living many miles apart, we’ve been able to use digital tools to continually (re)connect with each other, our cultures, and our communities - our relationship got me thinking about all the ways people in diaspora use the same digital tools to (re)connect, build solidarity, and organize towards liberation. To create this piece, I used digital software to join separate images of me and my friend’s hands, and embroidered the final image in the center of a ring of Armenian blackberries. Promise serves as a reminder of how we find our ways back to each other, and within that a promise of finding our ways back to our ancestral homelands.