Amer Shomali (Kuwait, born 1981) Broken Weddings in Salameh 729 DMC spools mounted on aluminium and wood executed in 2018 125 x 125cm (49 3/16 x 49 3/16in). Footnotes: 'I reconstructed the details of dresses from several depopulated villages using balls of yarn. I replaced each stitch with a whole new ball that was never used to embroider any piece... Dresses that were not embroidered, broken weddings, unperformed songs, unbuilt homes, unborn children. The balls of yarn are aligned like gravestones, like bags of corpses after a disaster, like abandoned beehives, like dried wells. Threads unable to liberate themselves from their balls to say what they have to say... Broken weddings, witnesses of the possibilities of lives that were amputated in 1948' - Amer Shomali TO BE SOLD FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE INASH ASSOCIATION Provenance: Property from a private collection, Dubai Note: Proceeds from the sale of the present lot will benefit the Inash Association Amer Shomali Amer Shomali is a Palestinian multidisciplinary artist, using painting, films, digital media, installations and comics as tools to explore and interact with the sociopolitical scene in Palestine. Much of Shomali's work examines the creation and the use of the Palestinian revolution's iconography. His art works are part of several collections: The British Museum, The Arab World Institute, Barjeel Art Foundation, The Samawi collection, The Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence (MoMRtA), Birzeit University Museum, and the Al-Qattan Foundation. Shomali co-directed an award winning animated documentary, The Wanted 18, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014. Born in Kuwait in 1981, Shomali holds a BSc in Architecture from Birzeit University in Palestine, and a Master's degree in Animation from Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom. He is currently based in Ramallah, Palestine. teaching at the Faculty of Art, Music and Design at Birzeit University. The Inash Association For 50 years Inaash has provided opportunities for thousands of women to earn income and provide needed financial support for their families. Skill, beauty and empowerment through the point of a needle. Maximizing employment opportunities for female artisans one stitch at a time, by producing high quality, hand made traditional embroidery. Nearly one-third of the registered Palestine refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized Palestine refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Currently Lebanon hosts close to 450,000 Palestinian refugees in 12 camps. Conditions for the communities living in refugee camps in Lebanon are notoriously difficult. Throughout the last five decades Inaash has worked to both preserve this culture and harness it as a means of livelihood for its practitioners in some five camps located across Lebanon. Since inception, over 2,000 women benefited from the production of Inaash products, both in monetary terms and through a sense of community and continuity. Successive generations have passed on the skill from mother to daughter. Their work with Inaash and the ancillary services it provides have had a positive impact not just on the women but on their families. This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: * * VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com