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For centuries, Palestinian women wrote the stories of their lives and land with a needle and thread. Appreciation for their embroidery, or tatreez, inspired artists who embraced and reinterpreted it visually and conceptually. They transformed Palestinian embroidery and images of the women wearing it into a symbol of Palestinian identity, steadfastness and resistance. In Narrative Threads, Joanna Barakat documents contemporary artists' vital role in shaping and maintaining the symbolism around Palestinian embroidery and its continued impact. She brings together the work of twenty-four established and emerging artists who incorporate its motifs and symbolism across various media - from painting, sculpture and textile, to film, photography and street art. While some artists use traditional imagery to celebrate and preserve Palestinian identity, others reimagine this to express ideas about time, space and memory while challenging colonial and Orientalist constructs. Featuring more than 200 striking illustrations as well as insightful essays by leading art historians Dr Tina Sherwell, Wafa Ghnaim and Rachel Dedman, Narrative Threads celebrates the immense beauty and significance of Palestinian embroidery in contemporary art. It reveals its power as a visual language that recounts the past, connects us to the present and envisions a different, hopeful future.
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Joanna Barakat is a Palestinian artist and gallery director. Barakat is founder of The Tatreez Circle, an Instagram platform celebrating Palestinian embroidery. Born in Jerusalem and raised in Los Angeles, she currently lives in Abu Dhabi.
