unravel
“Sometimes one has to know something many times over. Sometimes one forgets, and then remembers. And then forgets, and then remembers. And then forgets again.”—Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts
Rania Hassan combines knitting and painting to weave sculptural stories about our connections to time, place, and circumstance. While our memories change each time they are recalled, in looking back we can see things more clearly. UNRAVEL is about how we often have to take things apart to put them back together.
In knitting, unraveling is about correcting an error, or starting over. There is a vulnerability in letting things fall apart, and a revelation in seeing the new forms reassembled. Our experiences are so interconnected and overlaid that sometimes we only remember beginnings and endings, leaving the middles feeling hazy like clouds. Everything changes us, and every memory recalled is transformed by what we know now.
UNRAVEL was made from discarded elements of previous artworks and installations. Details drawn over and over—similar to how knitting involves patterns of the same stitch—are woven together again to take on new life. This repetition elucidates how memories aren’t solitary, they exist because they are indelibly intertwined with past and present and involved in a perpetual cycle of creation, deconstruction, and regeneration.