Friday 23 January

Sala refettorio

13:30

Friday 30 January

Sala refettorio

13:30

Friday 06 February

Sala refettorio

13:30

Embroidery as Narration is the eighth chapter of the Embroiderers of Actuality project conceived by Abdelaziz Zerrou, a transdisciplinary artist, and Aglaia Haritz, an artist and cultural mediator for inclusion and accessibility, involving refugee women and men residing in Ticino and people living there.

The course aims to build a shared space of storytelling, recognition, and creativity that centers the people involved as bearers of stories, cultures, and skills. Through embroidery and using art as a bridge to know, approach, mend, tell stories and embroider designs, the participating people share and transform their personal stories of exile, identity and journey into metaphor.
The workshop consists of ten meetings based on sharing experiences, listening to each other, the creative process and shared reflection. The creative process will be documented through audio or video interviews, and a return of the work done is planned.

Embroidery as Storytelling is one of the winning projects of the Cultural Participation Call 2025-2026 "Strong Culture. Projects from Different Voices," a joint interdepartmental initiative sponsored by the Office of Cultural Support and the Swisslos Fund Office of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports, and the Foreigners' Integration Service of the Department of Institutions.

Born in 1982 in Casablanca, transdisciplinary Swiss-Moroccan artist Zerrou graduated from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Tetouan and currently lives and works between Casablanca and Vira Gambarogno.
His artistic practice ranges from video to installation, sculpture to drawing, focusing on universal symbolic figures, their graphic representations, and the interaction between language, history, and visual culture. Zerrou engages with local communities to address contemporary issues both global and local. His fascination with the power of symbols, words and collective memory underlies an artistic practice that deconstructs and reinterprets the imagery that shapes our collective consciousness, challenging perceptions and inviting critical reflection.
Exploring themes such as identity, political structures and cultural narratives, his work recontextualizes familiar symbols within new aesthetic discourses. Using mixed techniques, she plays with layers of meaning, evoking tensions between visibility and invisibility, past and present, power and vulnerability.
Zerrou has exhibited in venues such as the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rabat, the Museum of Photography and Visual Arts in Marrakech, the New Art Exchange in Nottingham, England, and La Regionale at Villa Ciani in Lugano.
He has been awarded major residencies, including the Dar Al Ma'mûn Foundation in Marrakech, the European Capital of Culture in Valletta, Malta, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and the HYam Prize in Hydra.

Raised in Vira Gambarogno, Aglaia Haritz is a graduate of the ENSA art school in Limoges. She has lived in Berlin and Zurich as an artist and led the social-art project "Embroiderers of Actuality," moving frequently to countries around the Mediterranean.
Since 2006, she has worked for several associations dealing with people with diversity in Switzerland (PluSport, Procap, Inclusione handicap Ticino) and Germany (Lebenshilfe) and was responsible for vacation groups since 2010.
She trained in art therapy at the Institute for Humanistic Art Therapy (IHK) in Zurich, from Bettina Egger's method. In 2018 she obtained the LOM diploma (solution-oriented painting) and in 2016 the POM certificate (person-oriented painting).
Since 2017 she has been working as a contact person for accessibility and inclusion at LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, collaborating in particular with the Museo d'Arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI).