Leila Ali
Veiled - 2020
I have started this series having in mind the manual work of decorating photographs as a physical manifestation of love and remembrance. Through that process, reproducible photographs were transformed into unique objects. This activity, often made by women at home, was very common in the early stages of photography (19th-20th centuries), but is barely known nowadays.
Moved by this practice, this work uses discarded women’s studio portraits that I have collected in op-shops. Through a careful procedure, I partially covered the images with layers of different craft and decoration materials. With the reappropriation of this practice, my work states the invisibility as oblivion in two levels. Firstly, the invisible labour of women that built wonderful objects with photographs. And secondly, the invisibility of the women whose photographs have been discarded as images without value.

