The Language of Palestinian Embroidery

Wafa Ghnaim 

November 1, 2024 6pm

The First Unitarian Church of Portland

1211 Main Str.

Wafa Ghnaim is a Palestinian dress historian, researcher, author, archivist, curator, educator and embroideress who began learning embroidery from her mother, award-winning artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, when she was two years old.

Her first book, “Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora” (2018), documents the traditional patterns and stories passed on to her by her mother. Wafa has since become a leading educator in SWANA dress history and embroidery techniques, as the first-ever Palestinian embroidery instructor at the Smithsonian Museum. Wafa continues her mother’s educational legacy through The Tatreez Institute (Tatreez & Tea), a global arts education initiative she began in 2016 teaching courses in Palestinian, Syrian and Jordanian embroidery techniques and lecturing at leading institutions, museums and universities around the world. Wafa has since been featured in major media outlets, including Vogue Magazine, which named her and her mother “the world’s leading guardians of tatreez”. Her curatorial debut "TATREEZ INHERITANCE" (2023) at the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington DC highlights traditional Palestinian dresses circulating North America and the importance of reclamation in the diaspora. Wafa released her second publication “THOBNA” (2023) to celebrate Palestinian embroidery as a powerful form of resistance over the past century.

Wafa is currently the Curator for the Museum of the Palestinian People in Washington, D.C. and Senior Research Fellow for The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art.

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