Exhibition showcases Palestinian embroidery

(20 Jun 2016) LEAD IN:
An exhibition showcasing Palestinian embroidery is underway in Beirut.
Held at a satellite venue in Beirut, instead of in the West Bank - where it opened last month -, "At the Seams" is actually the first exhibition for the West Bank's Palestinian Museum.

STORY-LINE:
The intricate details of an embroidered dress.
These clothes are on show at the "At the Seams: a Political History of Palestinian Embroidery" exhibition.
It's the first exhibition held by the Palestinian Museum, but is being hosted in Beirut instead of the museum's home of Birzeit.
The displays immerse visitors into a world of art and fabric.
"Palestinian embroidery is extremely rich in this sense. It has a language arguably, a vocabulary, dialects of its own," says curator Rachel Dedman.
"Because despite being not a huge territory, Palestine had extraordinary multifaceted modes of making embroidery. So the work from Dimona is different from the work from Bethlehem, is different from the kinds of motifs that were practised in Jerusalem," she explains.
More than 50 dresses make up the exhibition, most from Widad Kawar and Malak al-Husseini Abdulrahim collections.
Dedman has visited locations in the Palestinian territories as well as camps in Jordan and Lebanon for her research.
She's collected video interviews, photographs, posters and painting to include in the exhibition.
And she says embroidery reflects the people's history.
"It has played a role in the Palestinian resistance movement of the 1970s or during the first intifada when women would embroider these explicitly nationalistic motifs onto their dresses and wear them in the frontline of protest," Dedman says.
Dresses from the time of the intifada of the late 80s and early 90s show Palestinians flags or maps.
More than 450,000 Palestinians live in Lebanon within 12 camps registered with the United Nations.
And Dar El-Nimer for Arts and Culture, which is hosting the event, hopes it will challenge perceptions of this community.
"Palestinians are not only refugees but they have a history and they have a background and they have...they had a country full of heritage and beautiful culture," says Rasha Salah, executive manager of Dar el Nimer.
Children from the country's largest Palestinian refugee camp have come to see the exhibits.
Eighteen boys and girls from Ain al-Hilweh on the outskirts of Sidon take part in workshops which introduce them to the art of embroidery.
Twelve-year-old Mariam Awad says she "learned how to embroider, how to create a pattern out of squares".
And Elissar Awad, aged 13, says this visit has convinced her that sewing "is not a boring thing".
The workshop organisers believe activities like this help to connect the children with their history.
"It's important for them to be reintroduced to this because this is a part of their heritage that still exists but in a different way," says Christina Skaf, co-founder of studio Kawakeb which designed the workshop.
"At the Seams" runs until 30 July.
The Palestinian Museum opened in the West Bank last month but does not currently have any exhibits at the site.
The location of the next satellite exhibition has not yet been decided.


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