Category Archives: The Warp & Weft

The idea for THE WARP & WEFT was born in September 2020. It’s a multilingual archive of stories that hopes to capture the zeitgeist of that year. Learn more about the vision for this project by visiting ABOUT > THE WARP & WEFT STORY. This is an organic, ongoing project, where responses to the archive can renew and expand it. Please have a listen.

The Warp & Weft Palestine


Today we launch the next phase of this project. In the midst of the gruesome genocide we are witnessing in Gaza, people from around the world are welcome to join us in reading, holding up, and sharing the voices and stories of Palestinian writers, poets, and activists. This is an open archive, so contact us if you would like to contribute a reading. Pls follow us on Instagram and listen to powerful poetry and stories from Palestine: @WarpAndWeftArchive

Warp and Weft by Shadab Zeest Hashmi


How we met in the lilt and nectary of the typed word
How air wove itself into spring around our screens and snapped time-
tables, and turned us from panic to song, spinning the counterfeit
back into gold, handing us to each other a filament at a time…

The Way Forward by Teresa Schreiber Werth


I have been officiating at funerals for more than 30 years. One might say I felt “called” to the work, not necessarily in a spiritual sense, but I have the right skill sets. Most of the funerals I have celebrated, have been for people who have lived long and full lives. They fall into the “circle of life” category, in which death is seen as a part of life.

ترک ناگهانی کابل – مرضیه رضایی


بعد از ۵۵ روز اقامت در کمپ، نام من و خواهرم نیز در لیست افرادی بود که به یکی از ایالت‌ها برای ادامه زندگی منتقل شویم. ما بعد از سه روز به شهر روچستر ایالات نیویورک رفتیم

[Leaving Kabul by Marzia Rezaee: After 55 days in the camp, Sohaila and I got on the list of people to be moved to a permanent residence. Three days later, we were sent to Rochester, New York. About a hundred people were evacuated from the camp in New Mexico that day…]

Reasons For Being Alive by Afsoon


Sometime over the past two years, something changed in me. As if I woke up and became someone else. A long period of being alone in my little studio folded me slowly, just like I fold and mould my clay. I started imagining life among my art pieces – I became my own subject.

The Warp & Weft [Face to Face] at Rochester Contemporary Art Center


Released in collaboration with RoCo starting March 2021, The Warp & Weft is an online audio archive created and curated by interdisciplinary artist Mara Ahmed. It is a collection of stories from the first year of the pandemic that weaves together diverse voices, languages and geographies. Now a year later, with the coronavirus still with us and the world knit together as tightly as ever, we revisit the archive as a multimedia exhibition. Experience The Warp & Weft [Face to Face] at RoCo (April 1-May 7) and immerse yourself in a colorful tapestry of stories.

Mon Plukami par Paul Couturiau


Le 1er février 2021, tu as tiré ta révérence. Seul, en compagnie de ton vieux chat, Indy. Pour moi, plus rien ne sera jamais comme avant. J’ai la sensation qu’on m’a amputé d’une part de moi. C’est douloureux. Nous deux, c’est une histoire qui remonte loin. 65 ans d’amitié.

[My More-Than-Friend by Paul Couturiau: On February 1st, 2021, you bowed out. Alone, with your old cat, Indy. For me, nothing will ever be the same. It feels like a part of me has been amputated. It’s painful. The two of us, it’s a story that goes back a long time. 65 years of friendship.]

Response to the Archive: Root To Leaf by Missy Pfohl Smith


Listening to the reflections from The Warp & Weft has been rich and relatable. Stories of people’s shifts to a more introspective, slower and more connected existence, but also surrounded by grief, fear, racial unrest and confusion. Listening to Mara Ahmed’s moving “Connectedness” piece sparked something inside of me.

Response to the Archive: The Warp and Weft Of It All by Karen Faris


I was moved by all the stories and by the rawness of people’s experiences along with their willingness to share. I couldn’t single out just one so, in the spirit of Mara’s work and her vision for this project, I wove them all together into this piece to create a tapestry of people, places, languages and realities because we are all many stories.

The Open Road – Discovery, Freedom and Healing by Saira Murtza


I have often wondered why traveling down an open road provides me with a certain freedom and healing seldom felt elsewhere. Though we may travel down the same highways, and drive past the same mile markers, the aging structures and familiar visited rest stops, each of us imprints our own impressions of a world based on our own experiences, leaving footprints of our own story in the landscape.