Artist Name: Natasha Cliche
Title: Connective Tissue
Medium: Cotton naturally dyed with pomegranate, onion skins and iron, silkscreen printed, stitched
Year: 2024
Artist Statement:
Connective Tissue is a textile-based exploration of my Lebanese identity and relationship to food. As a third-generation Arab-Canadian, I feel most connected to my culture when preparing and eating the foods whose methods have been preserved by my family despite years of assimilation.
This work features fragments of an email in which my late grandfather casually passed down a recipe for marinated lamb skewers– the focal point of our Lebanese dinners–to my mother. The composition is centred around a large-scale self-portrait in which I am eating lamb to showcase my family’s embodied approach to cultural preservation, and to challenge the food shame I have internalized from Canadian diet culture. Connective Tissue, shown facing the Dorothy Hoover library archive collection, reflects on the intangible archives that live within me and my family, connecting us to a culture that feels increasingly distant.