07/28/2025
Even as I immersed myself in the study of beauty rituals and the architecture of the vanity table for my upcoming installation in Madre_Land, my mind did not and does not waver from Palestine.
In researching the vanity table, its anatomy, its rituals, its power, I came across this:
“The popularity of cosmetics in ancient Palestine is attested by the wealth of archaeological material related to beauty and beauty treatments… tools for the application of cosmetics… storage containers for powders, creams and oils, perfume bottles, and polished mirrors… discovered at burial tombs, production sites, and settlements near the Dead Sea. The ownership of cosmetics was a luxury in ancient Palestine, but nevertheless a luxury which seems to have been fairly widespread throughout the population.”
—Laura Quick, Decorated Women, 2019
As I sit at my own table, preparing this piece, I often think of the people of Palestine. I pray for them. I mourn with them and for them. Their history is not separate from this research. It pulses underneath it. The mirrors, oils, and pigments speak not only of ancient beauty, but of a present struggle for dignity, memory, resistance, and liberation.
My work continues to trace how beauty and resistance don’t exist in isolation. They are deeply intertwined. In many moments, they are indistinguishable.
This is not separate from what is happening now.
Free Palestine 🇵🇸
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Image: “Three Female Heads”
These delicate heads belong to a group of ivories discovered at the site of Megiddo in Palestine. They had been stored in a semi-subterranean chamber archaeologists called “the treasury,” within a large building that may have been a palace. Pairs of heads such as these were attached to cosmetic boxes. A dowel inserted behind one head functioned as the hinge for a flat lid. A dowel behind the other served to fasten the lid closed.
Image source: Artifact from the Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago
Source: Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures – Highlights from the Collection: Palestine
https://isac.uchicago.edu/collections/highlights/highlights-collection-palestine
