Yassmin Abdulmalik

My piece is a snapshot of my heritage and their shared aspects.

On the right, my Shilha heritage of my mother and her parents, and the rug featuring traditional symbols used in weaving. On the left, my Black American heritage of my father and his parents.

My maternal grandmother passed away before I was born, and before my parents married, so I never got to know her. All my grandparents have passed away at this point, and thus, there doesn’t exist a picture of my entire family together in the same room. This rug exists to fill that space in my heart, so that I have something tangible to remember my parents and grandparents’ faces.

Both my cultures share a love for music, food as a language of love, and fashion as a way of expression and shared identity. While creating this piece, I had flashbacks of my mother braiding my hair, my father teaching me to bounce a basketball, the blues music my paternal grandfather introduced me to and my grandmother taught me to slow dance, and when my maternal grandfather would fix my traditional clothing on celebration days and telling me that my face tattoos were proof that I was of his blood. I might have never met my maternal grandmother, but I am the only daughter born from a daughter in my family. I was in the womb of my mother, while she was carried in the womb of her mother, and I am the culmination of two peoples love as an act of resistance against oppressive forces that sought to rid both cultures.