Noel Maghathe
Enough for me
On View: May 24, 2024 - July 21, 2024 I Main Gallery
Opening Reception: Friday, May 24, 2024 | 6 - 8 PM
Artist Talk: Saturday, May 25, 2024 | Starting at 2 PM
About the Exhibition
In their exhibition Enough for Me, Noel Maghathe beckons viewers to a poignant reflection on the interplay between place, identity, and loss. Through the medium of beeswax, these tile-like sculptures are reminiscent of Tatreez (Palestinian embroidery) and Palestinian architecture, Maghathe constructs a powerful vessel for collective memory — a repository of stories, history, and aspirations transcending lands and enduring across time. Against the fragility of beeswax stands the resilience of the Palestinian people, echoing the tireless labor once put into the soil through vocations such as farming and beekeeping, and whose land and life are currently being desecrated by an ongoing genocide.
The exhibition shares four twelve-foot-long sets of suspended tiles meeting in the center of the space. Each line consists of six-inch tile-like sculptures made from beeswax. Each is woven together as a ‘drawing’ using wicks as their drawing tool. They weave the wicks to translate the motifs, then dip them 15-20 times to create the line weight needed, allowing drips and the variables while dipping to make each piece its own.
Each line shares a different motif from Tatreez. This work is Maghathe’s research into the language of Tatreez, translating and transforming the motifs into something tangible. Continuing this tradition of the transfer of culture and knowledge between generations, they hope to inspire future generations to continue their own research and retain the connection to their Palestinian homeland. Tatreez has been viewed as a form of resistance throughout our fight for freedom. For years Palestinians would use their thobes (traditional dress) to share their stories, maintain their culture, and resist through art. This practice is a form of collective memory, a matrilineal folk-art practice now transformed not only by the artist but by so many Palestinian artists inspired by their homeland and ancestors today.
Fadwa Tuqan’s words resonated with Maghathe and their connection to the land and their use of beeswax. The material’s transient yet enduring nature demonstrates the limitless ability of bees to travel over fences and borders that Palestinians can not within their own land.
This poem’s visceral language exploring the ties between identity, land, and heritage brought this work to fruition. While searching for meanings behind different motifs, learning they vary from one village to another. Maghathe discovered the majority of patterns were focused on the landscape of Palestine, the moon, stars, and local flora, like cypress trees, were used widely in different areas. As meanings varied between villages, so did designs with small variations. The four patterns they share in this exhibition do not have confirmed origins due to evolving research, but are believed to be Moon patterns from Ramallah, Beersheba, and one more widely used throughout Palestine. They chose these four moon patterns from their meanings, documented as well-being and protection. Inspired by the line works of each one and the movements they felt in between the differences within the four, they replicate their own cycle of the moon, creating a new personal language.
This work is informed and impacted by the work of the project Tirazain, a digital archive and library with the aim to document and preserve Palestinian embroidery. Tirazain is a collaborative effort; nomenclature, attribution, and patterns are digitized and preserved based on books, journals, and photography, including references by Sliman Mansour and Nabil Anani who documented hundreds of motifs after visiting Palestinian villages and studying old dresses, photographs, and books.
The words in this poem bring new meanings to the show in the devastation of the genocide taking place for the past seven months in Gaza, with tens of thousands of lives taken in addition to the 76-year occupation. Tatreez has always been a force of resistance within the Palestinian women's community, and as each of them navigates their place in this fight for freedom, art can play a part in cultural understanding and connection. As Maghathe organizes locally, they found that everyone’s different skills and passions including art can play a role as we come together for a Free Palestine.
Until Liberation.
50% of all work sold in this exhibition will be donated to Gaza Mutual Aid Collective.
Excerpt from the poem “Enough for Me in The Night and the Horsemen,” 1969
Enough for Me
Enough for Me
Enough for me to die on her earth
be buried in her
to melt and vanish into her soil
then sprout forth as a flower
played with by a child from my country.
Enough for me to remain
in my country’s embrace
to be in her close as a handful of dust
a sprig of grass
a flower.
- Fadwa Tuqan
About the Artist
Noel Maghathe is a multi-disciplinary artist and curator based out of Cincinnati, OH. Maghathe seeks to create impactful moments of connection in their practice that are deeply rooted in their heritage. Their current works draw inspiration from Palestinian resilience in all forms. Through sculpture, performance, and light, they explore themes of identity, cultural memory, and longing. They have exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally, including at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and the Abrons Arts Center in New York, NY, among other spaces and shared curatorial projects at the Cue Art Foundation in New York, NY, Roots & Culture Contemporary Arts Center in Chicago, IL, and apexart in New York, NY. They have also participated in notable residencies such as Ma's House on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation and with Trocadero Art Space, Melbourne, AU. Maghathe earned a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati.