At the Seams
At the Seams is the Museum’s first international “satellite” exhibition at Dar el-Nimer for Arts and Culture in Beirut, Lebanon, curated by Rachel Dedman. The exhibition, which included items from the fascinating collections of Widad Kawar and Malak al-Husseini Abdulrahim, cast a critical look at the role of embroidery in shaping historic and contemporary Palestinian politics and culture. Based on years of research and fieldwork and featuring newly-commissioned video, At the Seams is interested in the history of embroidery beyond 1948, exploring its role in nationalism, resistance and the practice of Palestinian identity today.
Curated by Rachel Dedman and hosted by Dar el-Nimer for Arts and Culture, Beirut, Lebanon the Palestinian Museum's first satellite exhibition presents Palestinian embroidery in an exciting new light.
Embroidery is extraordinary material – tactile, intimate, laborious, political. At the Seams will break new ground in extending the history of Palestinian embroidery into the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Beyond its historical importance before 1948, embroidery has undergone rich and dynamic transformations in the decades since – constituting forms of heritage-driven nationalism, militant resistance, nascent economic power and challenge to the infrastructural and cultural violence of the Israeli state.
Key elements of the research concern the homogenisation of the ‘thobe’ both pre- and post-1948; embroidery and the fashioning of a modern Palestinian woman in 1960s Beirut; the use of embroidery in the revival of heritage by liberation artists; embroidery as resistance; and the history of NGOs and circulation of embroidery in a global marketplace.
The research has unfolded from the understanding that textiles sensitively reflect the changes in the social and political landscape in which they are produced. Taking material that is little documented and rarely exhibited, the exhibition will place historic Palestinian dresses from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in conversation with photography, painting, archival material and contemporary design. Newly commissioned film from artist Maeve Brennan gives space to the women across Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan who continue to embroider today, and whose voices are rarely heard.
The curatorial process has been driven by extensive fieldwork and archival research. The knowledge and collections of Widad Kawar and Malak al-Husseini Abdulrahim form the backbone of the exhibition's content. At the Seams will be accompanied by a research-driven publication and dynamic educational and public program in Beirut.
