Fozia Ismail: A Song for the Xeedho – The Knot Makers

Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 6 September 2026

Listen to a two-minute sample of A Song for Xeedho, the soundscape featured in Fozia Ismail's installation.

A knot that took a mother-in-law days to tie must be undone in minutes, in front of the whole wedding party, using nothing but wit. Riddles, poetry, teasing exchange: these are the tools. Get it wrong and the joke is on you. Get it right and you've proved something about who you are.

This is the Xeedho, the ceremonial Somali wedding basket at the heart of Fozia Ismail's new installation for Whitechapel Gallery's Backyard Biennial: East. Traditionally prepared by a mother-in-law for her new son-in-law, the basket holds preserved camel meat, ghee, spices, leather and shells, all bound together with rope deliberately hidden within its structure. The untying is a ritual in itself, a test of social intelligence passed down through observation and shared labour rather than instruction.

Ismail's installation began with an absence: a photograph, now lost, taken in Somaliland in 1998, showing the artist's mother and aunt twisting plant fibres into wedding rope against a bright blue wall. "It felt like watching a kind of magic," she says, "women transforming plants from the land into something strong enough to hold a house and a whole culture together." That missing image shapes everything here: rope, knots, woven forms and sculptural reinterpretations of nomadic objects, activated by a soundscape of Somali folk songs and family recordings that plays when visitors touch the ropes themselves. The recordings draw on archives held at Rome's Centro Studi Somali, layered with Ismail's own conversations with Somali nomadic elders, including members of her family...

(...)

Want to read more of this article?
We are proud to be a subscriber-funded publication with members in 185 countries. We know our readership is passionate about textiles, so we invite you to help us preserve and promote the stories, memories, and histories that fabric holds. Your support allows us to publish our magazine, and also ‘what's on’ information, and subscription interviews, reviews, and long-read articles in our online blog. 

ALREADY A SUBSCRIBER? CLICK HERE TO ACCESS CONTENT

Or, to continue reading….


Magazine subscribers automatically get free access to all our online content. We send the access code by email with the publication of each issue. You will also find it on the envelope containing your magazine. Please note the access code changes every issue. 

. . .

Image Credits:

All images: Fozia Ismail: A Song for the Xeedho – The Knot Makers. Whitechapel Gallery Backyard Biennial. Photo Credits: Damian Griffiths