Aadaab KELKE,IŁĆ (I pay my respects to you, Wild Rose) is a community-engaged textile work that brought together Indigenous and South Asian/Persian heritage communities through stitching circles inviting people to slow down, connect and create art in community while grounding with rose medicine.  Basic embroidery stitches are shared as folks embroider an Urdu poem by Mirza Ghalib about grief and joy encircled by KELKE,IŁĆ (Nootka roses).  

This project is grounded in my mother tongue, Urdu and in the poetic form of the ghazal.  The ghazal is a form of poetry that explores loss, longing and union with the beloved.  It is a poem of contrasts, dreams and astonishing leaps.  Poet Aga Shahid Ali says “it is an occasion for genuine grief.”  I have grounded this textile project in my personal grief of familial dislocation and disconnection through the impacts of Partition in India and I look at KELKE,IŁĆ and gulab (rose) as a plant relative that offers healing and protection for my heart. 

Installation

Images: Aadaab KELKE,IŁĆ, 2025, Open Space. Image credit: Kyra Kordoski

zine

A zine celebrating this community engaged work was created with the support of Open Space. It features the work and writings of artists and culture weavers who participated in Aadaab KELKE,IŁĆ. You can read the zine online.

Images: Aadaab KELKE,IŁĆ Zine, at Small Press Fest & Open Space. Image credit: Cairo Haq, Amena Sharmin

Click here to read about the stitching circles.