Ghafar Tajmohammad
Room Lit by an Open Door, Series, 2025
This triptych of painted handwoven textiles, using kilim techniques, presents a sequence of abstract geometric compositions of interior and exterior spaces. Each panel suggests a stage of domestic setting, whilst light passes through the panels, seemingly on a journey, gesturing toward departure and arrival simultaneously.
The work draws visual inspiration from the flattened perspective of Persian miniature painting and the spatial framing devices of Francis Bacon’s compositions. Conceptually, Room Lit by an Open Door explores the artist’s personalised interpretation of the idea of third spaces—drawing from Homi K. Bhabha’s political discourse of hybrid identity.
Open Loom, 2025
300 × 150 cm
Sapele wood painted with acrylic, cotton warp, wool
Open Loom is a co-participatory installation that invites audiences to engage directly with the artist’s creative process. Over the course of the exhibition’s three-week duration, visitors are encouraged to weave into the custom-built loom, contributing to a collective and ever-evolving tapestry. Ghafar, a British Afghan artist, uses rug weaving to explore how tradition shifts within diasporic communities—where engagement with heritage is reshaped by the distance of migration and the realities of lived experience. By opening up this traditionally private practice, the work becomes a space of shared making, rooted in the heritage of Afghanistan’s renowned carpet traditions.