Her Majesty: Velvet Woman

Teta, the seamstress, and Leena, the artist, share a common fear: the fear of colonization. The fear of taking up space—space on a page or in fabric. Her Majesty embodies this fear while simultaneously defying it, much like a seashell that forms to protect the snail but grows so boldly in size that it commands attention from predators. What keeps the predators at bay is not just the shell’s surface, but its deceptive beauty, which makes it appear harmless.

This work delves into the disarming “velvet” nature—a soft facade often adopted by the colonized, and by women, to seem less threatening to their predators. But The Velvet Woman, who seduces with her softness and beauty, conceals a harsher truth within. She may appear to offer nothing more than sweet dates and coffee, but that is merely to lure you in. Once drawn in, her books reveal a darker, more consuming truth.

This installation includes a performance by Leena, who recites a monologue in the voice of the Velvet Woman where the audience is pitted as the colonizer. Leena moves in and out of the structure wearing it as her own cape as she tells her story.

A demand outside the tent reads: “Take your shoes off.”

Inside the structure a text reads:

“I'm not just a pretty thing. Read all of me or don’t read me at all”

There are two hand-made manuscripts in the structure.

BOOK 1 “For the Native” and BOOK 2 “For the Colonizer”

The first book “for the Native” is a collage including a 100 year old poem Teta recited.

The second book “For The Colonizer,” is the more violent of the two. And it is written in the voice of the Velvet woman and her history of being colonized.

The books are an important piece of the experience and are collaged on paper using old materials and old paper, and found cut outs. There layered in a way where the observer needs to engage, opining and pulling pages to get at what is in the center.