IELE PALOUMPIS
Ταπήτιον/Tapestry, iele paloumpis, Jute fabric, cotton embroidery thread, and recycled clothing scraps, Dimensions variable, 2021-Present
A tapestry hangs on the wall. The jute fabric is light brown and similar to the texture of burlap. Draped over the top of the tapestry is a circular weaving, braided together with recycled scraps of clothing in brilliant reds, pinks, and orange tones. The jute tapestry measures 45 in tall x 32 in wide, and toward the bottom of the fabric is a wide band of hand-stitched embroidery. The embroidered motifs are Peloponnesian and the geometric symbols often adorn the sleeves of brides, whom upon their death, would be buried in these garments. Vibrant red triangles are interspersed with gradient accent colors, reminiscent of a sunrise to evoke the artist’s ancestral home in Cappadocia, Anatolia, as the name “Anatolia” comes from the Greek word for sunrise. The bottom of the tapestry unravels into jute fringe. Positioned on the floor underneath the tapestry hanging on the wall, are textile materials that on-site attendees are invited to touch and interact with. These include: Long, colorful, braided ropes coiled into bundles, sculptural roses made from the jute fabric, and another circular weaving made from recycled clothing, similarly brightly colored in red, purple, pink, and orange tones.
Ταπήτιον/Tapestry is a multidisciplinary work integrating embroidery, weaving, audio description, and live performance. The motifs and stitching techniques come from the artist’s Peloponnesian and Anatolian background. The piece on display is one small section of the larger tapestry, which measures 30 ft. x 10 ft. 4 in. paloumpis’s commitment to hand embroidering a piece of this scale is purposefully ambitious. In undertaking a work that can only be completed in decades, if ever, the artist defiantly asserts their intention to live a long life against the odds that they face as a trans person with a neurodegenerative condition in the time of COVID-19. Exhibiting this work at various stages of development resists pressures of ableist capitalist perfectionism and invites audiences to witness the time and care of undervalued "feminized" labor. Anything left unfinished is a reminder of the finiteness of our time on this planet.
I conceive of my textile work as an extension of my movement/dance practice. The first time I picked up an embroidery needle and thread, my body just knew what to do. I believe this somatic-knowing comes through epigenetics or blood memory, as embroidery has a long history of practice in my Greek and Anatolian bloodlines. I stitch to re-member cultural inheritances seemingly lost through forced displacement and familial trauma, but have come to understand that these wisdoms live on inside my hands. I also connect my somatic textile practice to a form of “crip”-artistry and embodiment - as my body changes through progressive disabilities, I have had to reimagine my relationship to dance and movement over and over again. Right now, textiles offer one of the deepest and sustainable pathways toward connection in my body - it is a movement practice, reaching backward and forward in time, allowing me to dance through needles, threads, weavings, and lacework.
The work I hope to present as a part of the indoor exhibition at Dyer Arts is an excerpt of Ταπήτιον/Tapestry - a multidisciplinary work integrating embroidery, audio description, folklore, familial history, and contemporary iconography toward a queer, crip, diasporic futurity. On a massive piece of burlap fabric, I am endeavoring to hand-embroider a large-scale Tree of Life with roots and mycelium descending into the Underworld, becoming entangled with motor neurons, family heirlooms, and endangered languages from historic Anatolia, Western Armenia, Assyria and Kurdistan. Traditional motifs will be interlaced with political slogans uplifting the urgent need for collective care amidst climate crisis. Calls for trans rights, abortion care, disability justice, and an end of colonial-capitalism will be subtly stitched into the very roots of the Tree.
Creating such a large-scale piece of hand-embroidery will be a life-long endeavor for me as a disabled artist, serving as a timeline of sorts, with the intention to live a long life against all odds – especially as someone with a progressive neurodegenerative condition in the time of COVID-19. When my mobility becomes too impaired to continue the piece on my own, the work will continue by inviting audience members to stitch τάματα (leaf-shaped votive offerings) into the canopy of the Tree of Life, as prayers for the Earth. Anything left “unfinished” will be a reminder of the finiteness of our time on this planet. As I grapple with the continued loss of my mobility and ultimately my mortality, I feel called to create work that is material and tactile, something to be left behind, to tell the stories that need to be told.
The section I will be working on for the Dyer Arts exhibition focuses on embroidered “slogans” as a nod to queer art propaganda, situated in early AIDS organizing. The political statements will be meant to uplift the inherent value and sacredness of queer, trans, disabled life in a time of widespread legislation intended to harm trans people and immunocompromised people in particular. I hope this work allows my communities to feel uplifted and less alone. I’m interested in “cripping” propaganda art by referencing imagery meant for mass-production and deepening into meaning through the slowness of stitching. By exhibiting this life-long project at various stages of development, I hope to resist pressures of ableist capitalist perfectionism and invite audiences into an exposed process, witnessing the time and care of often undervalued "feminized labor" - the act of stitching in real time. The attached photo is from a previous (smaller scale) work that gives you a sense of some of the traditional Greek-Anatolian embroidery techniques and motifs I am expanding upon in "Ταπήτιον/Tapestry." And the dimensions of the work listed below, represent the excerpted section I would be presenting at Dyer Arts (and not the full dimensions of the life-long completed work).
iele paloumpis is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans somatics, choreography, textiles and sound. iele’s work is rooted in kinesthetic awareness, trauma-informed griefwork, and ancestral re-membrance practices that reflect fragmented lineages across queer, trans and crip aural histories, alongside their Greek, Anatolian and Irish-American diasporic bloodlines. Recently, iele has been exploring intergenerational trauma and resilience related to centuries of occupation, forced displacement, and eventually the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, known to Greeks as “The Catastrophe.”
iele has been presented through Danspace Project, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, New York Live Arts, Dixon Place, Painted Bride Art Center, and Franklin Street Works, among others. They are currently a 2022/23 DanceUSA DFA Fellow.
iele is grateful to have learned from many collaborators and teachers who have influenced their path. This lineage includes co-creating with Marýa Wethers, Marielys Burgos Meléndez, M. Rodriguez, Seta Morton, Ogemdi Ude, Krishna Washburn, and Alejandra Ospina; being shaped by many artists within NYC’s dance community; building a relationship with plants through the teachings of Rosemary Gladstar; deepening into ancestral plant medicine across the Mediterranean & SWANA regions with Layla K. Feghali & SWANA Ancestral; becoming an end of life doula under the mentorship of Deanna Flores Cochran; studying dance at Hollins University with Donna Faye Burchfield and Jeffery Bullock; and channeling embroidery from the ancestors who have been teachers in guiding iele’s hands.