Andrés &Francisca Khamis Giacoman

Puntada sin hilo (A Stitch Without a Thread) is a sound installation by Francisca and Andrés Khamis Giacoman, that they will develop during their residency at Hotel Maria Kapel. Born into Chile’s Palestinian diaspora, the siblings delve into the intersection of these two worlds through spaces, materials and sounds that carry traces of movement, labour and industry. They are interested in what happens when machines stop producing textiles and begin to sing. Through their rhythms, these machines tell the story from their own perspective.

Chile is home to a large Palestinian diaspora, whose first wave emigrated more than a century ago. Palestinian migrants brought textile knowledge with them, contributing to an industry that became an important source of livelihood and economic growth. The project explores the connections and tensions between commercial production and textile practices rooted in domestic life, cultural knowledge and generations of shared experience. While the textile industry brought economic stability, it also raises questions about what happens when tradition becomes business: how does commercial value reshape cultural heritage, and what is preserved, transformed or lost when a living practice becomes an industry?

Puntada sin hilo follows this transformation through sound, tracing the journey from manual, domestic textile practices to industrial production and, eventually, the decline of the industry. At its heart lies a question: how can working with a material sustain a connection to a place of origin, and what happens when that relationship disappears while the wealth it generated remains? The soundscape unfolds across four chapters that will echo inside the chapel. 

Departing from an archive of human narratives, Francisca and Andrés shift their attention to the textile machinery still operating in the remaining factories of Chile and Palestine. They document the testimonies of these machines as witnesses to this unfolding transformation. What do the machines sing about? Are their hums and grinding sounds a dying wish, a wistful song, or a harmony that evokes the absent rhythms of human voices and noise?

In Puntada sin hilo, the artists invite us to unravel the past through a requiem of transformation, to listen attentively to the mechanical companions of the textile workers and to reconsider the spaces in which identity and memory are reshaped and passed on.

© Bart Treuren