Tatreez – added to Unesco's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2021 – is a form of cross-stitch embroidery used by rural women in Palestine to embellish their dresses. The Cambridge exhibition opens with the Nakba thobe, a white dress, now discoloured in parts, with closely worked dark red embroidery. Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery, at Kettle’s Yard, is the exhibition's third title, but not its last – it travels next to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. This research ultimately generated the exhibitions At the Seams: A Political History of Palestinian Embroidery, also at the centre, and then Labour of Love: New Approaches to Palestinian Embroidery, which was on view at the Palestinian Museum in Ramallah. “And this is what the thobes are doing as well, in the stories they tell: they are honouring the women who wore them.”Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery runs at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge until October 29.

Source: Ethiopian News July 16, 2023 09:07 UTC