Cochineal, 2023

Install View Chapter NY

Cochineal, a small parasitic bug that dwells on prickly pear cactus plants and have been used for extracting purple and red dyes by indigenous peoples across the Americas for many generations. At some point these cactus plants traveled to West Asia, they are called Sabbar in Arabic - reminiscent of the word for patience and steadfastness. In Palestine they mark proof of generational habitation and cultivation of land growing in thick lines that mark demolished villages.  

Here, Nasser uses the bugs to infuse cotton and silk fabric into shades of red and purple in the two works, alongside charcoal rubbings of a 200 year old oak tree in the artists grandparents garden. Imbued in the fabrics are these layers that living beings inherently contain, being in immediate relationship to these plants/elements and processing them through the works. Emodying the ecological histories of South Lebanon, using landscape as medium, these works examine the histories, geographies, and temporalities as they coalesce into ecologies of living in a borderland bound by an impassable frontier. 

Cochineal dye, salt, ash, charcoal rubbings of oak tree bark and roots, discarded fabric, and resin. 

Dala Nasser, Cochineal I and II, 2023, at Chapter NY.