Embroidering is a humble art, usually accomplished by hand and employing just a needle and thread.
This simplicity is reflected in the early 20th century Palestinian dresses opening the "Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery" exhibition currently on at The Whitworth, part of the University of Manchester (until April 7th, 2024).
Worn by women in the 1930s in Gaza while tending to fields and families, these garments incorporate embroidered elements that in some cases may have been sections of dresses that perhaps belonged to other family members. Darns and patches bear witness to the embroiderer's toil in the fields, while chest holes indicate adaptations for breastfeeding.
Like many everyday dresses, they are a testament to a multi-generational heritage, mutable and adaptable, showcasing the transformative power of embroidery and of garments as well, as emphasized by the exhibition's curator, Rachel Dedman.
Moving from two exhibitions she worked on for the Palestinian Museum, West Bank, in 2016 and 2018, Dedman, who is also Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East at the V&A, London, selected for this exhibition a variety of items, among them dresses, accessories, documents, photographs and videos, that allow visitors to explore Palestinian heritage.
The show spans over 100 years, taking us from the late 19th century right up to the present day: noteworthy pieces include a dress from Ramallah, donated to a woman who fled during the Nakba of 1948 ("Nakba" means "catastrophe" in Arabic), and embroidered clothing from Bethlehem, Jaffa and Hebron, that serve to highlight differences in techniques and motifs.
The exhibition then moves onto exploring the meanings of symbols of resistance, such as doves and guns, integrated into dresses during the Intifada (1987-1993).
Women at the time used dresses with motifs in forbidden flag colors to express nationalistic sentiments. In paintings and propaganda posters borrowed from the Palestine Poster Project Archives (PPPA) from this period, women in embroidered dresses also symbolised Palestinian resistance.
These pieces are displayed next to new ones by modern artists, from Mona Hatoum's hair pieces juxtaposing the fragility of this material to strong and solid grid-like configurations, to tapestries by Mounira Al Solh; from Aya Haidar's ongoing colourful embroideries that, like a modern graphic novel, retell her mother's memories of growing up during Lebanon's Civil War (1975-1990) to Khalil Rabah's "Defeated Geographies" (2017-2019), a series of fragmented, embroidered maps using embroidery to explore the theme of Palestinian territory.
Last but not least, the exhibition further considers embroidery's role in the construction of gender norms through pieces made by men in prison, and the role of NGOs in sustaining tatreez (embroidery) traditions.
It is worth noting that "Material Power" wasn't organized as a commentary to the current events in the Middle East - it opened indeed in July this year at Cambridge's Kettle's Yard space, moving to Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery at the end of November.
The situation in the Middle East remains complex: on October 7th, Hamas militants initiated an unprecedented attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages. In response, the Israeli military conducted air strikes on Gaza and launched a ground offensive. According to the Hamas-run government, Israeli airstrikes and operations killed around16,200, including approximately 6,000 children.
After a seven-day temporary truce, fighting resumed last week. During the truce, Hamas released over 100 hostages in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. The United Nations reports that, so far, close to two million people were forced to leave their homes in Gaza, with hundreds of thousands facing challenges in securing adequate food and water for survival. It is clear that in this conflict, like in any other war, only civilians on both sides have been paying the highest price.
Yet while religions, languages, cultures and traditions divide us, the common thread that binds us as human beings should prevail. Here behind the displayed threads and crafts lie numerous stories, narratives, and experiences that deserve exploration and understanding to get insights into artisanal skills, but also to unravel the intricate layers of political motifs, fights, and struggles woven into these creations.
And there's a caveat for fashion designers (and fashion students, obviously...) as well: never appropriate a symbol or a pattern that belongs to another culture for your creations without studying the meanings behind them, but always opt for collaborations and ethical exchanges with artisans.
You have written two books on Palestinian embroidery and published extensively in contemporary art contexts about it: what fascinates you the most about this topic?
Rachel Dedman: My passion started around 2013 when the Palestinian Museum commissioned me to curate an exhibition for them on this subject. They invited me because I am specialized in Islamic art history and modern and contemporary art. Besides, I had an interest in textiles and I could move between Lebanon, where I was living, and Palestine and Jordan. What grabbed me about it and hasn't let go since, is the ability for something as familiar and everyday as your clothing to tell these nuanced, fascinating, beautiful, complex stories of women in Palestine. Nowadays we can discover the narrative behind our clothes by checking their labels, and discovering where they were produced and what they're made of. But an embroidered dress does that in an even more intimate way, and through it and through the beauty of clothing, you can unfold a more human, intimate history of Palestine.
In which ways can textiles, and more specifically embroidery, carry a deeper cultural and symbolic meaning beyond what might be expected from a traditional craft or handmade item?
Rachel Dedman: I like to think of embroidery as a visual language - it is indeed a way of communicating. In the 19th and 20th centuries, what you choose to embroider on your dress told the world something about your identity, your status and origins, and revealed the ability for clothing to communicate. It was also the key to a shared world because women would be able to read other women's dresses and, from that, they would know where they were from, who they were and so on. Embroidery is therefore not just something decorative, but also communicative. In the case of Palestine, after the Nakba of 1948, embroidery became so important to create messages of resistance and to the movement around reviving heritage as a way of resisting the narratives that wanted Palestine to be a land without people or that stated that Palestinians didn't exist. Embroidery is evidence that they do exist and that they have always been there. Therefore, embroidery took on this new political significance as a sort of symbol of the nation. In the exhibition visitors will also discover paintings and posters featuring women in an embroidered dress: in these cases, women lose their individuality to assume a symbolic role. To understand the deeper cultural meanings beyond embroidery, you must try and understand how it lives beyond the body and sits in the realm of the symbolic.
The exhibition emphasizes the longevity and difficulty of creating embroidered pieces under challenging circumstances. Can you tell us more about some of the stories behind the exhibited items, providing insights into the circumstances and personal narratives of the creators?
Rachel Dedman: One really good example is the dress that visitors will see moving into the second gallery where we discuss the 1948 Nakba, this moment of catastrophe, this line in the sand, when Palestinians are displaced from their home, killed in the thousands and displaced after Zionist forces take control, the British leave and the State of Israel is declared. There is a dress that becomes a symbol of this traumatic event and that hints at the human impact of that moment. The dress in question was made in the 1930s by a woman from Ramallah. It's in that classic Ramallah style with raw linen with red embroidery. The woman who made it ended up donating it to another woman that she didn't know who walked into the West Bank, having been displaced from her home during the Nakba. Probably she was carrying with her nothing more to wear than whatever she had on, quite often their very best dress because it was their most prized possession. Clearly the person who inherited the dress was taller or bigger than the person who originally made it, because she enlarged the garment using the sacking from a bag of flour donated to refugees by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Details reveal the source of the fabric: you can see the little edge of the bag of flour, the word "ṭaḥīn" (Arabic for "flour") stamped on the side in that kind of UN blue. The very material of this dress speaks to that human reality of displacement. The dress is humble, it is covered in stains and it doesn't look like much, especially compared to other more spectacular designs like the wedding dresses that visitors will be able to see in the exhibition. Yet the dress tells this incredible human story of the resilience and the generosity of women at what must have been the most difficult period in their lives.
How do the regional variations in embroidery techniques and motifs reflect the cultural and historical changes in Palestine?
Rachel Dedman: Visitors are invited to make connections between the items on display and other materials that bring to life these motifs. For example, Jaffa is famous for its oranges and on dresses you can find the orange blossom motif or the airy fairy branch pattern. In the exhibition a dress with these motifs is displayed next to archival images of men packing oranges in the orange house. In terms of techniques, while most Palestinian embroidery it's best known for cross stitch, in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, but especially in Bethlehem, you have this technique called tahriri, meaning "couching" in which you lay a cord on top of the fabric in a three-dimensional way and you tack it down. This is ideal to create amazing swirling patterns on a dress. In quite a few examples in the exhibition, the artisans who made them employed solid gold and silver threads, in particular for motifs representing a clock. This technique subtly conveys the wearer's social status, particularly among Bethlehem women who, as a whole, tended to be wealthier compared to those in other regions of Palestine. The opulence of the embroidery, adorned with gleaming gold threads, becomes a symbolic representation of the local prosperity in this area that is a also a well-known pilgrimage site.
The exhibition also mentions the use of embroidery as a tool of resistance during the first intifada. Which were the symbols and techniques employed by women in expressing political resistance through their embroidery during that period?
Rachel Dedman: We're showing a series of intifada dresses made during this moment of uprising that started in 1987. On these dresses you will find traditional motifs but in national colors evoking the Palestinian flag, so red, black, green, and white, together with a new vocabulary of motifs that include things like the Ship of Return or the Map of Palestine. The flag features very heavily, together with key architectural sites like the Dome of the Rock or the Al-Aqsa mosque sitting on the chest panel. In these garments you will also discover a lot of texts and words, in both English and Arabic. They represent a new set of motifs and vocabulary somehow. The word “Palestine”, for example, appears heavily or allegiance to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is made clear. These pieces were used in protest in an active way because you couldn't have flags in public, they would be confiscated and it was illegal to show the Palestinian colors. At the time, the watermelon also became a key symbol because you could slice it and its colors would point at the Palestinian flag. People began to stitch onto their dresses because they couldn't be taken from the body, while the flags may have been confiscated. What should be noted about them is not just the creativity of the embroidery, but the long time employed to make these pieces. When we go to a march, we may just make something quickly to wear or carry, while in these cases they would do all these time-consuming items in secret and in very difficult conditions. The time invested in making these designs points at the extended notion of the resistance as a movement or a process, and not as a single event, but something that's ongoing and for which you fight with your needle in a very humble way.
How does the reinterpretation of traditional embroidery contribute to the ongoing narrative of Palestinian identity, and how are these reinterpretations received within the community?
Rachel Dedman: Good question. People updating embroidery today represent a really important and natural part of the evolution of clothing, fashion and tradition. There may be embroidery purists who prefer things to remain very traditional because they feel that Palestinian craft and heritage are under threat, like the whole of Palestine and from this point of view the preservation of these traditions has political importance. But, in my opinion, it's vital that it continues to evolve and change and I also think that’s unstoppable. That said we must highlight how, unfortunately, most Palestinians don't necessarily know much about embroidery today. They certainly know it as something that is their heritage. Yet many women wouldn't practice it anymore and some of the oldest generations still wear embroidered dresses, even though they may be cheaper designs maybe bought in a market. The traditional embroidered thobes women wear for their henna night during their wedding celebrations nowadays are usually bought, so the connection with embroidery today is quite different. In some cases it's not that people feel precious about their embroidery traditions, but they don't necessarily know about them, so those who continue to make embroidery and innovate it do not receive any resistance.
The exhibition features contemporary embroidery works by artists such as Mona Hatoum, Khalil Rabah, Mounira Al Solh, Aya Haidar and Majd Abdel-Hamid. How do they bridge the gap between traditional embroidery techniques and contemporary art and how did you come across their work?
Rachel Dedman: I got to know these artists personally while working on other projects and while living in Lebanon and Palestine. For them embroidery is a kind of central part of their practices. Including contemporary artworks in the exhibition was an attempt at bridging the past and the present, the historical works and the more modern pieces and approach them from a different perspective, offering up other ways of thinking about embroidery beyond the specifics of the Palestinian context. In my opinion, embroidery remains a sort of articulate force for artists, an instrument through which they can talk about things. For example, the Nakba dress that I mentioned earlier on is displayed next to the work of Aya Haidar who's showing these weedy embroidered hoops with six images on them. From a distance you can see quite brightly colored sketches or patterns, so you may think they are rather playful and inviting. Yet, when you get closer, you realize they bear witness to something darker: the embroideries represent indeed memories of her mother growing up during the Lebanese Civil War, portraying the simple acts that her family took to stay safe during this conflict. They show us people going to the market and putting metal pans on their chests as makeshift bulletproof vests, or sleeping under their beds at night, or standing in the doorway during an air raid in case the ceiling caved in and piling up the furniture because her grandmother got annoyed at constantly having to take glass from the shattered windows out of it. Sure, you could have painted these memories, but there's something more intimate about them being embroidered, they tell women's stories and the mediums chosen to make them point at domesticity, at the labor required, but also at an intensity conveyed through needle and thread, elements that allow the artist to transfer these memories onto an embroidered object. By contrast, in that same gallery, we're showing these large embroidered maps by the artist Khalil Rabah. He has taken these contested geographies in Palestine, like the outline of the Gaza Strip, of area C of the West Bank or the Dead Sea, and created with them a sort of patchwork or embroidery. Some of these pieces are displayed slung over these poles, so they look like animal skins or something that's been taken off a body, like a war spoil. Here embroidery is used as this symbol of the nation, as a like statement of Palestine. But the pieces also hint at the violence enacted to Palestinian geography and the complicated nature of that geopolitical context. The artist may have used another material, but embroidery allows him to endow the pieces with a special legacy. So, the most interesting thing for me while examining these pieces is wondering what embroidery is adding to these works while also showing visitors how interesting and critical embroidery can be as a form of expression for artists today.
Aya Haidar's ongoing series "Safe Space" that you just mentioned resonates both with the situations of danger and fear many people are currently living in countries where there are conflicts and wars. In many ways, embroidery can be a means to deal with trauma: are there any other examples in the exhibition that can be considered as the result of a therapeutic form of healing?
Rachel Dedman: In the exhibition we're showing a new work by the artist Mounira Al Solh who often makes these embroidered tents that somehow relate to what you are describing as trauma repair, catharsis and memory. The pieces she made for this exhibition represent two tent-like structures made of these throws that you find in every Middle Eastern home, they are indeed ubiquitous in every Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese house. And they're full of these little holes that reflect a story from Mounira's childhood. When she was growing up during the Lebanese Civil War and at night there were bombardments and she couldn't sleep, her mother would allow her to tear little holes in her pajamas and then to sew them closed, to embroider them shut, basically. In this case, rather than closing the holes in the tents, she embroidered around them, effectively to kind of strengthen their edges. Her mom was obviously trying to get her to do a meditative exercise, an embroidery task to take her mind off what was going on, to distract her from this trauma. But today, for Mounira, this is a way of working through those events and through what happened. In the exhibition the tents are hung quite high so that when you walk underneath them, the lighting comes through the little holes and you see star-like reflections on the floor of the gallery, so they may hint at a starry sky or at bullet holes. In the background you can hear this rather haunting audio of children singing lullabies in different languages.
We mainly mentioned women's work, but, in the exhibition, there are also objects made by men held as political detainees in Israeli prisons. How does the exhibition address the intersectionality of gender and political resistance within the context of Palestinian embroidery?
Rachel Dedman: When I was traveling around and talking to women as part of my research, I was constantly asking them about the involvement of men as they weren't really visible or they were involved in machine embroidery but not to make garments. Women explained that husbands or sons helped them with the embroidery that they do for money when they produce work for an NGO organization or something like that. Yet the men just don't like talking about it. At the same time, we found that political detainees in a prison do embroider with pride. In this space we can talk about their own role in embroidery and the embroidered objects they produce. Quite a few objects are improvised with whatever materials they have available, so they are very humble, but at the same time beautiful. For example, we have on display a handmade embroidered bag, a set of beads, two pens and a little book, modest objects that still express national pride for Palestine as they are made with the colors of the flag. These pieces also carry a lot of love and tenderness for the women in their lives as they are often made for the women in their lives, so for their mothers, wives, sisters or daughters, at times to mark occasions such as International Women's Day or Mother's Day. In this case, like in the case of the women’s dresses with the intifada symbols, embroidery mediates in the refusal of gender norms.
Are there any pieces in the exhibition that deconstruct gender norms or specific cultural or political symbols?
Rachel Dedman: In the exhibition we have a piece by Khalil Rabah entitled "Tattoo" consisting in a keffiyeh stretched on a panel in which he removed all the black threads from the main design that runs through the center of the scarf and those threads sit at the bottom of the frame, almost as a mound of hair. This gesture makes you wonder if, by removing a core part of this accessory, he is challenging the masculinity in it or merely the strength of this symbol. Yet you can still see the ghostly trace of where these threads were as if to say that the symbol prevails. So, through this deconstruction the artist may be commenting about the persistence of such symbols in Palestine and what they continue to mean today.
The exhibition shows us how embroidered objects and clothing now exist predominantly as a commodity produced by NGOs: do you feel that the current political situation will prove more detrimental for this art and that embroidery somehow will be forgotten?
Rachel Dedman: I don't think embroidery will die at all. I think that, in fact, in some ways the political situation since 1948 has meant that embroidery has been assiduously preserved, supported and cemented. It is indeed often the case that, in contexts where these crafts aren't under threat, that they end up not being preserved. As we have seen, there artists continuing to innovate this art, employing these techniques, expanding their applications and helping embroidery evolving. I have also discovered that there are younger generations of Palestinians in diaspora who are picking this craft as a way of connecting with their own heritage. At times, they write me to say that their grandmother is Palestinian and, while they may not know much about the craft, they are willing to learn. So, I think more people will engage with heritage as a mode of connecting to a place under threat.
Do you hope the exhibition will help visitors learning more about Palestine in these complex and challenging times?
Rachel Dedman: A few days ago, I saw an interesting video online in which they stopped people in the street to ask what words they associate with when you mention different countries. For obvious reasons, most people know Palestine as a place of conflict and war, but "Material Power" offers the chance to celebrate the beauty of its heritage, the fascinating narratives that its clothing carries, and to come away with a different understanding of the human histories from Palestine. So I'm sure that visitors who will come to the show will leave with an expanded knowledge about Palestine and its crafts.
Image credits for this post
1. Everyday dress from Gaza or Hebron, 1935-1940, from the collection of Tiraz: Widad Kawar Home for Arab Dress
2. Polaroid, 1973, from the archive of Inaash Al-Mukhayim. Courtesy of INAASH
3. Polaroid, 1973, from the archive of Inaash Al-Mukhayim. Courtesy of INAASH
4. Detail of dress from Gaza, 1940s. From the collection of Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi Museum for Palestinian Heritage Image © The Whitworth, The University of Manchester. Photo by Ruth Wedgbury
5. Detail of dress from Bir al-Saba', 1930-40. From the collection of Maha Abu Shosheh. Image © The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, Photo by Ruth Wedgbury
6. Detail of dress from Deir Tareef, 1940s. From the collection of Maha Abu Shosheh, Image © The Whitworth, The University of Manchester. Photo by Ruth Wedgbury
7. Maeve Brennan, still from The Embroiderers, 2016, courtesy of the artist
8 - 21. Installation views. Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery, The Whitworth, The University of Manchester (2023). Photo: Michael Pollard
