How do we define a place? Ayan Farah’s work is marked by her deep interest in the geographical and geopolitical characteristics of the places she spends time in, most recently Sweden, Senegal and England. In these places, she collects minerals, soil or plants such as indigo, which she later uses in her studio to produce pigments for dyeing. The “pictorial ground” always consists of historical textiles from the 18th and 19th centuries, which Ayan Farah cuts up into individual fragments for dyeing and later sews together again by hand and machine to form strict compositions. During the dyeing process, the textiles become “ vessels” of the geographical characteristics of certain places as well as their socio- and geopolitical characteristics. At the same time, the textiles are “places of memory” of the stories of their former owners, often “marked” by hand-embroidered initials that refer to past times as an “index” and now become part of Ayan Farah’s works. This “cyclical” approach to textiles, which is currently finding expression in pop culture in the form of “recycled fashion”, is based on Ayan Farah’s biographical roots in Somalia where the collection and processing of textiles with hand embroidery has been practiced by her family. Ayan Farah’s keen eye for the availability of natural resources is also based on the fact that her ancestors were nomads who, depending on water and natural resources, moved from place to place and adapted their way of life to their immediate surroundings.