Camille Eskell. Embroidering Power and Vulnerability Along the Edge of a Fez

Bodies, fabrics, traumas: how Camille Eskell turns vulnerability into visual strength

This article about Camille Eskell was originally written and published by me in Italian on Artribune, the leading Italian magazine for contemporary art. You can read the original version here

When you enter Camille Eskell’s world, you don’t simply walk into an exhibition. Instead, you step into a multi-generational story told from the perspective of someone who, for a long time, spoke in a low voice. A first-generation American whose Iraqi Jewish parents were born and raised in India, Eskell braids memory, the longing to belong, and a distinctly feminist gaze into a practice that moves fluidly between sculpture, digital collage, painting, and installation.

Today she exhibits regularly in the United States and abroad. Her series range from the “plight of the fez-maker’s daughter” to her recent solo show One Thousand and One Threads at Kapow Gallery in New York. Her practice speaks of patriarchy, migration, vulnerability, and resistance, through a meticulous, sensual visual language. This combines care for detail with the clear-eyed lucidity of someone who never stops questioning power.

The Interview

In telling your story, you’re very clear about where the work begins: you say it all starts from fear. What do you mean when you speak of “fear” as the driving force of your work?

It began in the 1980s with a very simple question to myself: what am I feeling, and why? The answer, very often, was fear; fear of not being enough, of not having a voice, of being pushed aside. I also started to wonder what actually motivates people; where those drives and anxieties come from. I felt that feelings such as fear were sparked in childhood, so the first series tackled that terrain directly. From there I began working on psychological states; on sensations of being erased, suppressed, held back. That feeling obviously had a feminist dimension, but I didn’t want to make slogans. I wanted to understand how certain emotions take root in the body, in language, in relationships.

At a certain point you say that psychology, personal history, and cultural history become “a single root.” How did that convergence develop over time?

As I grew older, I realized I couldn’t separate what I felt from where I came from: from my family, our culture, the ways women were regarded. Around us there was still the underlying assumption that in the end we would marry, that this would be our “shape.” In the 1970s, when I was in college, feminism was everywhere, yet in daily life certain roles persisted. So I began consciously mixing family history, cultural background, religious tradition, and the condition of women. They were no longer separate realms; they were layers of the same fabric.

Let’s talk about The Fez as Storyteller. Why does the fez become the protagonist of this narrative?

The fez is a heavily charged object, tied to a masculine tradition and to a certain idea of authority and respect. I also use it as a foundation because both of my grandfathers traded in fez caps. It’s a literal patriarchal base in my family history. For me, it’s almost a family presence, something that “sits” on men’s heads, and in some way, also marks the lives of the women around them. I began using it as if it were a body, or rather a head that carries memories, commands, expectations. I cover the fez with silk, ornamentation, fabrics, digital images. I cut it, multiply it, hang it. Each piece becomes a small sculpture that tells a story of marriage, obedience, rebellion, desire.

In Dis-Miss: Let Me Entertain YOU the fez even becomes a bra; it’s a very striking piece. How did it come about?

That work grew out of a mix of irony and anger. I took two fezzes and turned them into a bra, with fringe and inserts that recall belly-dance costumes. It’s about female servitude; about the decorative role we are assigned. “Don’t just stand there like a decoration” was a phrase I heard often. Here the decoration becomes parody: the fez, a symbol of male power, is transformed into “boobs,” as I jokingly call them. It’s not just a punchline; it’s a way of showing how the female body is used and controlled.

In your recent works, such as Queens of Babylon, do you still feel that initial fear, or do you see yourself as being in another phase?

This piece was inspired, through my research and reading, by the Mesopotamian figure Queen Puabi, whose tomb in the ancient city of Ur was unearthed to discover her crowns and other items. She is assumed to be a woman of high rank (a queen or high priestess). The crowns adorning the female figures in the digital collages are those found in the tomb. But, for the cage-like one, I constructed to hint at duality. Of course, I drew from Mesopotamia because of our family origins.

The Ezekiel Project spans a difficult period in your life. What is this series about?

“Ezekiel” was my family’s original surname; an uncle changed it when he arrived in the United States. It’s also the name of a prophet who speaks of resurrection and return. In that project, I worked on this feeling of being without roots, of having to find a new footing after personal traumas, from divorce to health issues and death within the family. These works bring together fragments of bodies, and graphic marks that try to reassemble themselves. There is no linear healing. Rather, there is an ongoing labor of reconstruction, a stubborn effort to come back into oneself.

For more than twenty years you taught art at Staples High School, in addition to teaching at the university level. What role did teaching play in your practice?

It was fundamental. For twenty years I conducted a special program, a place where I could really work with highly motivated students. Seeing some of those young people grow, start exhibiting, even end up in major New York galleries has been one of my greatest joys. I always tell them: seek a real relationship with your teachers, get experience in galleries, in studios, with curators, even with the people who install exhibitions; that’s where you truly learn how to move in the art world.

Wearing Tradition, Not Being Subject to It

Looking at her works: the fragmented bodies, the faces, the queens, and the fabrics that traverse them, does not mean merely approaching an “exotic” story; it means recognizing how the structures that silence women repeat themselves, with variations, across many cultures. In those borders of cloth, in the layering of images and ornament, we can begin to imagine another way of wearing tradition; not as a blanket that smothers, but as a mantle that finally clothes you as who you are.

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