Knowledge Share Description

Until the mid-twentieth century, the dress of the Palestinian people was descriptive of identity; first by societal segment (city dweller, villager or nomad), and then by the region in which the wearer came. Within each regional style, finer distinctions in women’s dress (thobe) were expressed that shared the maker’s life and the natural world around her. Palestinian women recorded their identity in their thobe with embroidery (tatreez*) through a shared illustrative language of embroidered patterns, stitching techniques and thread colors. The thobe records unwritten stories and serves as a visual register of collective and individual identities, documenting a woman’s village, tribe or town, her marital status, her familial lineage, and the material impact of colonialism, occupation, war and exile. The regional identity of the woman defines the overall governing style of her thobe, and evidence of identity is largely through her embodiment of land.

*This knowledge share is not a tatreez stitching class

We will explore:

• Regional distinctions in dress in historic Palestine by city, village and tribe for at least five regions, to include Ramallah, Galilee, Yaffa, Bir Saba and Bethlehem.

• the historical and cultural significance of the Thobe

• the art of Tatreez (embroidery) and the role it plays as a visual language in recording personal and collective histories

• the relationship between dress, identity, cultural preservation and resistance

• the impact of colonialism, occupation, and exile on the evolution and transformation of traditional dress and embroidery

Cost

$35 - Living Library Membership (access all knowledge shares for the month and our archive for $35)

$45 - low income

$65 - standard

$90 - pay-it-forward (if you have financial abundance, this is our pay-it-forward option to fund our full tuition scholarships)

or access this knowledge share via our Living Library $35

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The zoom link will be sent upon registration. Recording will be available for 30 days.

Please apply here for a scholarship.

Living Library

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Accessibility Information

Virtual Gathering

*ASR (automated) captioning provided

The knowledge share zoom link will be sent out immediately upon purchase, along with any other necessary information.

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

5:00pm - 7:00pm Eastern Standard Time

Class will be recorded and available for 30 days. This means you can join from anywhere in the world.

Facilitator

Wafa Ghnaim is a dress historian, researcher, author, archivist, curator, educator and embroideress who learned from her mother, award-winning artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim. Wafa specializes in Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian, and Lebanese dress history and identification, with a focus on traditional embroidery techniques, historic reconstruction and oral history. Wafa’s first book, “Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora” (first ed 2016; second ed 2018), documents the traditional patterns and stories passed on to her by her mother. She has released a number of publications since, including THOBNA (2023), Tatreez Companion (2024), Tatreez Beauty: A Coloring Book (2024), and has published her research with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Institute for Palestine Studies, and more.

Wafa continues her mother’s educational legacy through the Tatreez Institute, a global arts education initiative she began in 2016 teaching Palestinian, Syrian and Jordanian embroidery techniques and lecturing at leading institutions, museums and universities around the world. The Tatreez Institute stewards a collection of over 180 dresses and headdresses from Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon that were rematriated from households and shops across North America for the purpose of preservation, education, publication and research of intangible cultural heritage in the diaspora. Wafa was the first-ever Palestinian and Syrian embroidery instructor for the Smithsonian Museum (2017-2021) and earned a prestigious senior research fellowship position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2023-2024). Wafa has been featured in major media outlets throughout the duration of her career, including Vogue Magazine, which named her and her mother “the world’s leading guardians of tatreez”. Wafa is currently serving as the Curator for the Museum of the Palestinian People.