My work constructs narratives of place and connections to lost bodies, through mark-making, photo-documentation and material studies that manifest as textiles and works on paper. My practice is intensely personal. I explore themes of identity politics, domesticity, land and memory access, in relation to my lived experience as a Palestinian refugee, a daughter of a disappeared casualty of the Gulf War and an artist.

I inherited from my father a Lebanese travel document for Palestinian refugees in place of a passport, some personality traits as described by others who knew him, and a letter. This letter became a cornerstone in my journey into art making and the creation of a metaphor - a pigeon - that appears and disappears throughout my work. In his writing to his family, he describes what my siblings and I are up to, in a way that feels pertinent to our adult characters or paths. Or so, I like to interpret it as. Translated from Arabic, he says “Dina (3 years old) is growing up and becoming more mature everyday, she has the tongue and intellect of an adult. Just yesterday, she was drawing a pigeon (or a dove) followed by other drawings for the family”. Touched by his words and the only tangible memory I can lay my hands on, this pigeon that is in a constant state of searching, circling and landing, became my connection to past and present, my younger self, my artist self and to him.

https://www.dinakhorchid.com/