Mending is a metaphor for Aya Haidar. Her Recollections series comprises photographs of war-damaged buildings in Beirut into which she stitches multicoloured embroidery thread to “repair” the bullet holes. “It was about filling in these voids – these holes that are scars, remnants and traces of something that is dark, ugly and traumatising, and filling it with something colourful and joyful,” she says.

Her Lebanese family fled the war in 1982, moving first to Saudi Arabia and then London. “For my family, those damaged buildings remind them of something terrifying, but something that does need to be remembered.”

Structures That Cooperate takes its name from the 2018/19 programme currently happening at Cubitt, London. It is a programme of projects that talk to Cubitt’s context as an artist-run co-operative. It is a call to question default approaches to programming a gallery space, looking instead to collective formats, imaginaries and realities. For the Ways of Learning exhibition at BALTIC 39 events will share work, process and research in collaboration with Aya Haidar, NewBridge Project, Hands on Film, BALTIC 39 Staff, Cinenova, Kirsty Clarke and the Artists’ Union England.

Recent Slade School of Art grad Haidar’s poetic works see embroidered postcards stacked in racks atop white plinths. According to Athr’s Maryam Bilal, the artist “moved to England because of the war in Lebanon, so being a refugee is always a theme of her work. She wants the embroidery to expand elements in the postcards, cities, and landscapes that she finds most beautiful.” Within the works (each stand priced at £1,800) picket fences are sewn with black thread; swimmers lounging around municipal swimming pools are given lobster-red lifejackets. The series, titled “Wish You Were Here,” is “about this feeling of wanting to go home,” Bilal noted.