Material Power: Embroidery, Dress, and Resistance in Palestine

Embroidery is the most important cultural material of Palestine. This ancient practice, called tatreez in Arabic, is characterised by remarkable beauty and complexity. Beginning with an introduction to embroidery’s traditional making in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this lecture traces Palestinian embroidery’s adoption as a touchstone of national heritage following the Nakba of 1948. It examines its subsequent politicisation, through PLO policy and the work of artists, and eventual commodification and production in the present.
During the First Intifada, 1987-1993, ‘Intifada Dresses’ were made by women and worn on the frontlines of protest, at a time when Palestinian flags and colours were banned in public. On these dresses, traditional embroidered motifs mingle with doves, rifles, and signs of allegiance to political parties, rendering women’s bodies active sites of resistance. Addressing these alongside embroidery made by male political prisoners held in Israeli prisons, Dedman reflects on craft’s contribution to the construction and refusal of gendered roles in the Palestinian resistance.
Bringing together embroidered dress, archival material, commissioned film, and the work of contemporary artists, the lecture reflects on the enduring critical power of embroidery in both past and present.
Following the lecture, Rachel Dedman will be in conversation with Osman Yousefzada, artist and writer.
Organised by Unsettled Subjects: Unsettled Subjects is an interdisciplinary collective of architectural educators and researchers, whose members hail from diverse institutions across the UK (including The Courtauld), Europe and Africa. We seek to understand the political present by engaging critically and collectively with texts and ideas - through reading, research and creative practice - in order to interrogate issues of identity, race, ethnicity, gender, sex, sexuality, class, and power.