Explore the history and cultural significance of Palestinian Tatreez in this interview with artist and author Joanna Barakat, focusing on the evolution of embroidery from a village craft to a global symbol of national identity. Learn about the impact of the Nakba on traditional thob construction, the role of 20th-century artists in preserving indigenous heritage, and the modern transition of Palestinian embroidery into contemporary art and fashion.
What made Tatreez — Palestinian embroidery — the symbol of Palestinian identity? Not ceramics, not glass blowing, not straw weaving. Why the stitch?
Today, we sit down with Palestinian artist and author Joanna Barakat, who has spent years chasing this question. She unravels the deep-seated significance of Tatreez (Palestinian embroidery). Once hand-stitched by women in rural villages to signal their status and environment, Tatreez underwent a radical transformation following the 1948 Nakba.
The result is Narrative Threads (2025), an anthology featuring 24 living Palestinian artists who use tatreez in their work — from Sliman Mansour and Nabil Anani to artists working inside Gaza right now, embroidering evacuation maps in real time.
Joanna shares how Palestinian artists in the 1960s intentionally elevated these traditional motifs into a collective national symbol to spark a sense of "Palestinian-ness" and resist cultural erasure.
Whether you grew up with Tatreez in your home or are just beginning to explore the language of each motif, this conversation offers a powerful look at how a centuries-old craft continues to evolve as a living archive of Palestinian existence.
This episode is hosted and produced by Tala Elissa. Our executive producer is Zina Jardaneh. Our associate producer is Zeena Shehadeh. Social media by Leen Karadsheh. Research and copywriting by Dima Sharif. Branding by Sara Sukhun. Theme music includes excerpts from Clarissa Bitar, The Popular Art Centre - مركز الفن الشعبي & Rim Banna.
This conversation was recorded on February 2nd, 2026. You can watch it on YouTube, here.
Tarwida is a series of conversations that bring Palestinian arts, culture, and heritage to the forefront. We hear from artists, including writers, filmmakers, musicians, architects, culinary practitioners and more about their very own Palestine.
In a nutshell, if you want to know more about (Creative) Palestine, this is the place to be.
Follow us on socials @tarwidapodcast
--
Relevant links and Resources:
Relevant Tarwida Episodes:
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction — the artists who painted around the rules
1:45 Meet Joanna Barakat — Jerusalem, Los Angeles, Abu Dhabi
4:00 Tatreez as an indigenous language — writing an autobiography in thread
7:00 Why Joanna grew up without tatreez in the house
8:30 Tatreez motifs and emojis — a new way to see the stitch
9:50 Before the Nakba — village life, regional dress, and the thobe
13:00 Trade routes, Bethlehem's gold thread, and regional variation of Tatreez
16:00 Personal creativity within the tradition — how women made the thobe their own
19:00 1948 and the 1960s the rupture and the refugee camp dresses
21:30 How PLO-era artists made tatreez a national symbol
25:00 Machine embroidery — pros, cons, and how to tell the difference
30:30 Tatreez on denim — is modern fashion evolution or dilution?
32:45 Heartstrings — the painting Joanna stitched into her own skin
36:00 Reclaiming a motif — the book that never said "Palestine"
37:30 Tatreez Circle — how a community built itself one workshop at a time
40:00 Can you truly learn heritage through a screen?
44:00 COVID, October 2023, and the urgency of preservation
47:00 Narrative Threads — why this book needed to exist
49:30 How the 24 artists in Narrative Threads were chosen— and what connects them
53:30 Broken Weddings — the most powerful artwork in the book
57:00 Joanna's next body of work and future plans
58:30 How to find Tatreez Circle and join a workshop
Joanna: [00:00:00] I wanted it to be visceral. I wanted, I wanted it that way. Originally I had done a couple self portraits where I painted the tatreez. I didn't actually stitch it onto the canvas and it didn't have that same effect. And this is why it was so important for me to learn how to do it. And the, the stitching on the chest, it's, it's almost like, like a tattoo.
You know, I wanted it to go into the skin. I wanted it to be a permanent statement, a reminder of this, this feeling of actually, no, I belong everywhere, and we all have our experiences and our stories that make us who we are and that make Palestinians the diverse, rich cultural people that we are.
Tala: Hello everyone and welcome to Tarwida.[00:01:00]
I am Tala Elissa. If you're Palestinian, you probably grew up in a home with a lot of tatreez. Even if your grandmother didn't wear the traditional thobe you probably came across the cushions, the tablecloths, the key chains, and the very famous wall hangings. But how did these items become such an important landmark in all Palestinian households all across the world?
In order to answer this question and many others, I sit in conversation with Palestinian artist Joanna Barakat. We dig deeper into the history of tatreez and try to understand how it became such a crucial component of Palestinian identity. Joanna is a Palestinian artist who is dedicated to preserving and documenting Palestinian tatreez, and she's the author of Narrative Threads, a book that documents the evolution of tatreez through showcasing the works of 24 different Palestinian artists.
Before we begin, I encourage you to subscribe to our channel and turn on your notifications to receive all our new episodes. And don't forget to follow us on social media. If you're listening to us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Anghami, we highly encourage you to watch [00:02:00] this episode for all the visual references included.
You will find the link in the description. We are recording this episode on February 1st, 2026. Joanna Barakat, ahlan wa sahlan in Tarwida podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you with us.
Joanna: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Tala: You know, preparing for this interview made me realize how integral tatreez is for us Palestinians, even without us knowing, for example, take me as an example.
I'm a 32-year-old Palestinian living in Cairo, and I'm ashamed to say this, but I think I've never held a thread and needle. So you'd think that I'm very, very far from tatreez. But actually if you take a look at my house, my desk, you start noticing some resemblances and, uh, I started like, you know, I did this exercise looking at what tatreez, uh, motifs I have.
For example, I have this card from my sisters. It has a nice motif. I have this, um, tablecloth from my grandma, and it's on my desk every day, but [00:03:00] I don't notice it because it's so integral. You know, when something becomes so part of you, you don't see it outside of you. And then I have a notebook, so it's, uh, it really made me appreciate how creative Palestinians are in preserving this, very, very precious, uh, heritage that we have.
Joanna: Palestinian embroidery is a storytelling device, and I feel that in, even in the card, in the notebook, all of these things, these are parts of maintaining that story. That's us trying to preserve it and it's gone from being worn on a thobe, to so many different variations and expressions of Palestinian embroidery.
Tala: True. True. And I'm very excited to learn more about that transformation and that transition from you. But before we delve [00:04:00] into, into all of this, we'd love to know more about you, about your background, and about your relationship to Palestine.
Joanna: Oh boy. Where to begin? I think, I think the best place to begin is is my grandparents.
All my grandparents are Palestinian. My grandmother was from Jerusalem. She was displaced twice, once during the British mandate period, and again, during the Nakba to Jordan. This is on my mother's side. And my grandparents on my father's side were from Al-Khalil, and they were internally displaced to Jerusalem when my dad was a baby, and that's where I was born.
So after my parents got married, my mom moved from Jordan to Jerusalem and my older brother and I were born there before we moved to the US. In terms [00:05:00] of connecting with, with Palestine, Palestine has always been a part of my journey. I grew up in a city that was predominantly Zionists, so I had to stand up for Palestine a lot.
I was always trying to advocate and educate the people around me. And, you know, for a few of my friends, they were able to understand what Palestine was. But for the most part it was, it was really difficult growing up there. Um, and then, yeah, then I moved to London for university. That's where I studied art and media, and then moved to Abu Dhabi later on in life after getting married.
Tala: Mm-hmm. You know, I was [00:06:00] expecting when I was reading about you that tatreez was part of your upbringing and was part of your childhood, but, but actually it wasn't, it started, you know, becoming part of your work and part of your, um, dedication to Palestine later on in 2017, as far as I understood. So tell us more about how it started. Tatreez; how did it become part of your work, part of your life?
Joanna: Well, tatreez wasn't part of my life because my grandmothers didn't wear embroidery. So though they were quite skilled, for example, at knitting and clothes construction, they, they didn't practice tatreez. Tatreez wasn't part of our household. See, it was really the farm and village and bedouin women that wore the thobe.
And my grandmothers were from the city of Jerusalem. They didn't wear the embroidery, it was considered socially unacceptable at that [00:07:00] time. So growing up we didn't really have tatreez in the house. It wasn't, a big part of our environment growing up, and it only became part of my environment after I got married.
On my husband's paternal side, his paternal grandparents were falaheen (farmers). They, his aunts, they all wore the embroidered dress. So it was really after I got married that Palestinian embroidery was introduced into my life and in such a beautiful way. And when I wanted to do my painting Heartstrings, that's when I asked my sister-in-law, who is an incredibly skilled embroider to teach me how to cross stitch, just the basics. How to begin a stitch, how to end a stitch. Um, 'cause I wanted to incorporate it into one of my paintings, and this is when I started reading about [00:08:00] it and researching it. And that research led me to discovering how tatreez can be used and seen as a language in itself. The different motifs, similar to the way we use emojis today, can be used to express different ideas and um, different words.
So, that's when I started incorporating it into my art practice, researching it more. I started teaching workshops. I felt that it was really important for people to understand what they're looking at when they're making or buying tatreez to be conscious consumers and makers.
Tala: I never thought about it as emojis.
I love this, I love this equivalence. Now it makes perfect sense actually. And as you said, tatreez really varies from one geographical area to [00:09:00] another, but also from one time period to another. And there's, uh, historical timestamps that we can trace back through the motifs through, uh, how the dresses were made, through how it became popularized after 1960 in particular.
So tell us more about maybe the pre-Nakba period. And how tatreez was, uh, perceived then and, how the Nakba actually changed, our perception of tatreez and how it is practiced among the communities.
Joanna: Sure. Well, this ties a little bit to what I was just saying, where women in the city didn't wear the embroidery.
It was the women in the farms and the villages and the Bedouin women. I'm just going to, if you don't mind, I'll read you a short passage from Narrative Threads. Historically Palestinian embroidery communicated and embodied the story of Palestinian women living in [00:10:00] villages, farms, cities, and bedouin communities.
Along with the artistic skill of embroidery and dress construction, a girl learned many life lessons, stitching her future wedding dress while sharing stories with the women of her household and neighborhood. With a needle and thread, she wrote her autobiography in a language of motifs, passed down to her.
Her hand embroidered dress or thobe is a conversation with the onlooker about her environment, beliefs, marital and socioeconomic status, all fundamental aspects of Palestinian village life. The thobe was cherished and passed down generationally, along with ancestral knowledge accompanying its creation.
Palestinian embroidery is much more than decorative embellishment. It is an indigenous language, which has transmitted Palestinian cultural knowledge for centuries.
So here we're looking at, this is talking about the dress before 1948 [00:11:00] and, the way I see Palestinian embroidery is like a tree, right? So historically, up until 1948 where there is a rupture, you have the trunk of the tree, and then after 1948 it starts to branch out where you have, the displacement of Palestinians and the dresses that come out of the refugee camps, for example. You have the commodification of the embroidery.
You have all the different offshoots of machine embroidery and social enterprises, organizations creating things with embroidery. And this all happens in the decades that come after the Nakba. And it's not just the tatreez. We're also speaking about the dress construction, the fabrics, the textiles involved, the headdresses, the jewelry, all of [00:12:00] this form a picture of what that Palestinian woman was within her society within village life, for example.
And if we look at, for example, these collections of antique dresses. They're an archive of, of the woman's cultural narrative in Palestine regionally, 'cause of course when you go from region to region, there's, there's a lot of variation the way women dressed historically in Bethlehem, for example, was very different to how they dressed in Northern Palestine.
Tala: And these variations or differences between different, um, cities or between different, uh, geographical locations.
Uh, how did they come to be? What are the factors that distinguished these, uh, variations?
Joanna: There's regional differences that are a result of [00:13:00] the environment, but also because of trade. So Palestine was a major trade route, and you also had centers of pilgrimage because of the religious sites across Palestine.
So, these would bring in a lot of traders to these different areas. You also had weaving centers. So you had weaving centers in Palestine, for example, Majdal was a weaving center. You had Rumi linen that was made in Ramallah, but you also had cotton coming in from Egypt. You had silks coming in from Syria, so you had these different fabrics and textiles being traded, and you had industry as well. These all contributed to the way women dressed. In Bethlehem, for example, you had [00:14:00] couching embroidery. Couching embroidery at that time historically was done with silver and gold threads. These were very luxurious and the more embroidery on the dress, the, the wealthier, the wearer was right?
Because you are demonstrating how you can afford to have all this embroidery on your dress. These are the different indicators that you would have based on regionally where you were, right?
Tala: I'm, I'm Googling what couching embroidery is.
Joanna: This is the Tahriri Stitch from Bethlehem.
Tala: Oh, okay.
Joanna: So instead of a cross stitch, it's a, a laid thread that's stitched onto the fabric and it's, um, yeah, it was a, it's a very beautiful stitch and it's the way it moves, it moves in much more of an organic way, and there's a lot you can do with it, [00:15:00] which is quite exciting for an artist.
Tala: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And how much room was there for people within the same province to creatively innovate? Um, like, for example, now we had inherited, uh, you know, very strict, um, dresses for each province. You know, many people actually hang it on the wall. This is the thobe for Khalil, this is the thobe for, uh, Bethlehem, for Jerusalem. But how, how, really, structured was it back then or was there creativity for personal preferences to change, for example, the colors, or to be creative in the motifs?
Joanna: I think first you have to understand that when we're speaking about regions, the regions historically were different to how the cities are separated now. For example, Gaza isn't The Gaza Strip. Gaza was a large region, so you've got all the different villages around it. [00:16:00] Jerusalem, we're not talking about just the city of Jerusalem. We're talking all the villages that surrounded Jerusalem. That goes for Khalil, for Bethlehem. We're talking not just the main city center that we see a dot on the map of, but we're talking about regionally.
So it's the whole area around it. So that's important to understand. Women absolutely personalized their dresses. They would create color variations within the motifs. So, for example, you would find, um, flowers represented in different ways, and you still see that till today when, when people are hand embroidering their thobe, they always add some sort of personal touch to it, whether it is in the choice of motifs or even creating a new [00:17:00] motif to add to the dress.
Tala: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And um, I have another question about when they would wear the dresses. For example, now it's for occasions, mostly for weddings, for celebrations. I'm sure a lot of women wear them every day, but in general, they're very much tied to occasions.
Was it like that back then, or was it more of a, you know, a daily dress that you just, uh, wake up to wear.
Joanna: It was both. So you would have your formal dress that you would've worn to your wedding and you would wear in other celebrations and occasions, and then you had the everyday dress, which would probably have less embroidery on it, or would be less ornate.
So I was, I mentioned the dresses from Bethlehem, for example, with the couching embroidery. So you have what is known as the Malak thobe or the Royal thobe. And this would've been worn on her wedding day. There is a, it was [00:18:00] read in that they would've been married and buried in that dress. But for everyday dresses it would've been a cross stitch dress, for example.
Because, again, we're talking about people who are in the farms and the villages. You still have to cook. You need to work, you need to do everyday chores. You're not going to be in your most fancy dress to do these everyday sort of things.
Tala: True. True. And Joanna, you, you mentioned that 1948 was a rupture in time for tatreez.
But also in your book you mentioned that 1960 is also, the 1960s, were also very important, because it was then that tatreez became more popularized and it was then when, tatreez became a national symbol of Palestine. Tell us more about that time and why that happened.
Joanna: We had the Nakba in 1948, so the [00:19:00] priority was not Palestinian embroidery, to sit and embroider. The priority was survival, right? You have all of these different people who were displaced into the refugee camps, and at that time you had no access to the threads. The weaving centers were, some of them were destroyed and razed to the ground you had no access to, to your basic needs.
And there's a very good example that's quite well-known of a woman who had a dress from the 30s and she had gifted it to another woman at the time of the Nakba. And she used a UN flower bag to extend the dress so that it would fit her. So that's, that's, um, a shift that we see. Again, where when we, we speak about the [00:20:00] embroidery that comes out of the refugee camps, you have women from all different regions of Palestine coming together.
So there becomes a, a new dress that comes out of the camps and there's a mishmash of motifs. So instead of having this very localized expression of identity, it becomes more of a collective expression of identity, and this is partly because of the circumstances they're under, where women are seeing other women.
You see someone in a different dress and go, oh, those motifs are beautiful. I want to put that onto my dress. And you're getting different influences, but also. In terms of the way Palestinian embroidery was understood and viewed in the 1960s changed because of the role that artists played. When the PLO was [00:21:00] founded, they created a department within the PLO, the artist, Ismail Shammout. He became the founder and director of the Department of Arts and National Culture of the PLO in Beirut at the time, and his wife, Tamam al Akhal, became the head of the Art and Heritage section of the Department of Information and Culture. So what does that mean? At the time, they wanted to create this sense of a collective Palestinian identity. And before, when you spoke to someone from Palestine, they were from Ramallah, they were from Bethlehem. They were from a specific city, village, region. But it wasn't about this collective consciousness, this collective national identity. And what the artists had to do at that time was to create art that sparked that feeling of [00:22:00] Palestinian identity, Palestinian-ness. And in order not to be arrested or have their work confiscated or galleries to be shut down, they had to create imagery that was subtle. It was able to communicate this, this idea without being so overt, so it's not gonna be flags and, and very obvious symbols of Palestinian identity. Instead they turn to pastoral imagery, images of rural life. And, when you think of olive trees, when you think of the woman in her embroidered dress, this creates an emotive response for Palestinians, 'cause it's a tie to the land. So immediately they start feeling this sense of connection.
Now at that time, and historically, before [00:23:00] 1948, Palestine had major cities. These cities had industry, they were bustling cities, which had everything every city across the world had. But when we think of Palestine, we think of these landscapes with the trees and the farms, and the farmers and the women in the dresses, because this was intentional at the time, in, in the 60s and the 70s and so on. And these paintings were printed as posters. They were distributed in the refugee camps. So this sort of imagery became tied this idea of the woman in the embroidered dress as the motherland became tied with Palestinian identity. And that's why when someone like me whose grandmothers didn't necessarily wear the Palestinian embroidered dress, can look at these images and feel [00:24:00] this sense of connection. This is what the artists created. And this is why I wrote Narrative Threads, is because I felt this was such an important conversation to have, especially about Palestinian embroidery.
Tala: Mm-hmm.
And, and another interesting time period in the evolution of tatreez is, the introduction of machine embroidery because it, really, transformed how, how the dress was made, how it was, bought or received, and also how it looked.
Because if you compare a handwoven dress, it looks different than a machine-embroidered dress. So tell us more about your take on this, you know, machine embroidery, take over, over tatreez.
Joanna: With machine embroidery, it's important to know there's different kinds of machine embroidery. So [00:25:00] from 19, I would say the late 1920s onwards when machine embroidery was introduced to Palestine.
The machine embroidery was done by hand, so there was, it was a ring on the machine, and you would actually do stitch by stitch on the machine by hand. So this is probably the closest thing you'll get to hand embroidery that's done on a machine. This sort of machine embroidery still exists. It's not as common now because you have other kinds of machine embroidery, more mass produced industrial machine embroidery.
This is something that we saw come out of the 1990s and is still very common and popular now. So my take on machine embroidery is I think it's wonderful that [00:26:00] Palestinian embroidery can be accessible because a lot of embroidery is so expensive and laborious to make, not everybody can sit and embroider a thobe, whether it's a time constraint or a physical constraint.
So this allows people to be able to wear the embroidery when hand embroidery is not an option for them, and that's wonderful, that's okay. For me, the issue happens when the machine embroidery is, there's no transparency. It's not sold as machine embroidery, it's sold as hand embroidery. So I get a lot of people come up to me and say, Joanna, what do you think of my thobe it's hand embroidery and I have to break it to them.
Actually, this is machine embroidery, you know?
But it's, I mean, and that's, that's fine. It is what it is. So, so I think that the issue [00:27:00] becomes with the seller. The seller needs to be, be clear about what they're selling. And in a lot of cases, they're not.
Tala: Yeah. Yeah. Another, another way, people have tried to make, tatreez, I would say more accessible is, popularizing it through different fashion trends. So basically now there's a rebranding of tatreez being cool. And in order for that to happen, you need to adapt it to a modern western clothing. So you would have the tatreez on the collar or on denim, which is very different from the tatreez that our grandmothers used to wear, obviously.
So, uh, do you also see this, as an evolution? Just like you were talking about machine embroidery. Or do you think of it differently? How should we react to it? What are the risks to it?
Joanna: I think tatreez is very cool. Um, it absolutely is an evolution. I think it speaks to [00:28:00] what we wear, not just in terms of time in that time has passed and fashion has changed, but also bringing in influences from the diaspora as well and what's being worn.
Like I was mentioning earlier about my analogy with the tree, this is just another branch, right? And, and it's beautiful to be able to celebrate your heritage and to be able to celebrate being Palestinian in such a lovely way. It's not practical to wear a thobe in every circumstance. I mean, as ideal as that would be, and as much as I would love it, having tatreez on a jean jacket is much more practical.
And we see this shift in, in clothing. It was Inaash in starting in from 1969 when it was founded into [00:29:00] the seventies, that started creating what would, what was considered more fashionable variations, of how tatreez can be worn. What I'm wearing today is actually by Inaash as well. So, so this is, this is definitely part of the evolution of the embroidery.
Tala: Mm-hmm.
Joanna: The embroidery isn't static in its heritage. We change, our positions have changed who we are socially and culturally. This constantly changes and the embroidery changes with it.
Tala: Mm-hmm. And going back to your first painting, Heartstrings. It's a beautiful self-portrait. I appreciated it very much.
Um, but it was also painful. Maybe I shared this briefly with you because you are stitching on your skin and I was imagining how the thread a needle would go into your skin and out, and it was a bit of a like, a grim [00:30:00] scene, but at the same time it's beautiful. So tell us more about whether you intended it to be that painful or is it just me?
Joanna: No, that was the exact feeling. I wanted it to be visceral. I wanted, I wanted it that way. Originally, I had done a couple self-portraits where I painted the tatreez. I didn't actually stitch it onto the canvas and it didn't have that same effect, and this is why it was so important for me to learn how to do it with Heartstrings.
Heartstrings was about this feeling of wanting to reclaim my story and my sense of belonging, as a Palestinian. It's very common, and I've heard many stories also of other people who have grown up in the diaspora feeling like a foreigner [00:31:00] when they're in Palestine. But then when you're back in the US or wherever in the west, you're also the outsider.
So trying to bridge that gap and trying to say, actually, no, I belong everywhere and my story is valid. And the, the stitching on the chest, it's, it's almost like, like a tattoo. You know? I wanted it to go into the skin. I wanted it to be a permanent statement, a reminder of this, this feeling of actually, no, I belong everywhere.
And we all have our experiences and our stories that make us who we are and that make Palestinians, the diverse, rich, cultural people that we are, 'cause we have so many stories. And that's very [00:32:00] much what Heartstrings is about. It was also my discovering of tatreez that was part and parcel to the painting, being able to, because my Arabic is broken. And though I understand everything, it's sometimes it's hard to communicate. And that also creates this feeling of separation from that sense of being Palestinian enough, right? And learning tatreez and becoming proficient in, in that language, I felt this sense of connection that I didn't feel with any other medium that I had used.
And that also made me fall so much in love with Palestinian embroidery. The motif that is stitched in that painting. I took [00:33:00] that from a book called Arabesque, and Arabesque was written by an Israeli textile researcher. It's a, it's a nice book. It's got lots of motifs in there, and she gives some general background, but she doesn't use the word Palestinian once in the book, or Palestine, she just refers to it as Arab embroidery. So in a way, I feel that it's not just reclaiming my story, but it's reclaiming that motif. So now you have this motif with a Palestinian story by a Palestinian artist painted on a Palestinian image on a Palestinian person. There's also that sense of taking that back for us, which I'm very proud of.
Tala: And they go as far as claiming that it's Israeli. I've seen it. Uh, [00:34:00] you know, they, they talk about our dresses and our thobes and our tatreez as Israeli cultural heritage and it drives me crazy, you know? Um, so yeah, it's very important what you've done, in reclaiming, not, not just in this painting, but also your other initiatives as well.
What's also, special about your work, Joanna, is that you like sharing it with others. And this is where we'd, like to know more about Tatreez Circle. So it's not just about you learning tatreez with your relative, in your studio, for your painting, but you also do appreciate the collective sense of, practicing the ritual with other Palestinians around you.
So tell us more about that initiative, how it started and what it is.
Joanna: Sure. The Tatreez Circle is a Instagram page, and I started it when I first started teaching tatreez workshops. It was a way to let people know when I had a workshop, so there was that [00:35:00] practical element, but it was also a way at the time when I started the page, it was a way for me to share the things I was learning and the things I was excited about, relating to tatreez.
Tala: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And what do you think of this, intentional way of learning heritage? Because it's not only with tatreez, but we also see it with cooking, we also see it with all the communal practices that were embedded in our culture. But now because we're living a very modern, fragmented lifestyle, we uh, seek to kind of like structure that knowledge in workshops, in online courses.
I'll give you an example that's not very much maybe relevant, but it reminded me of it. So, now I'm, um, I'm pregnant. I'm, due in two months. And, my friends keep sending me courses for lactation. Like this is a lactation consultant. This is, oh, well what about you sign up for this for that. And I feel weird about signing up for these things because it should come naturally. It could, it should come [00:36:00] communally. You know, our, our mothers and grandmothers, they taught each other this practice very organically, so it kind of feels a bit imposed. But then I remember that actually I don't have family around here because I'm living in, in Egypt and I don't have, my family or my sisters around.
So, I mean, this is what I'm left with and it does mean something to me, so it shouldn't feel less. But it somehow does. I don't know if, if, I mean, I don't know if this is relevant, but it could be applied to what you're talking about in terms of like workshops versus your grandmother or your relative organically teaching you how to do tatreez.
Do you feel that tension or, uh, does it work for you in a different way?
Joanna: Well, first of all, congratulations! That's super exciting.
Tala: Thank you.
Joanna: It's wonderful that the knowledge is accessible this way. And that we can learn from books, workshops, [00:37:00] online tutorials, whichever. There is something that is lost, however. I am working on, on a series now on a body of work that is looking at how ancestral heritage is transmitted through screens. How instead of learning it from our mothers and our grandmothers and the community that we live in, how we are actually learning all of this through screens. And what, what kind of distance does that put between you and the actual heritage?
Does that affect it? It brings up a lot of questions and they're very valid questions. I think that's why also tatreez circles and coming together in community is so important. I feel for those of us [00:38:00] living in diaspora, especially, that we, we crave that sense of connection. We really do.
Tala: Mm-hmm.
Joanna: And that is something that was severed with displacement, um, and with this distance from the origin.
Right?
Tala: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. This is an ongoing struggle. You know, the more effort you put, the more maybe superficial you feel, but actually it really shows how willing you are to learn and how to bridge this disconnect. So there is also more intention, which I really appreciate in our generation, because you can easily just forget about your heritage and actually life encourages you to, so the fact that you go and you sign up for a workshop is in itself very telling. You did mention that, uh, when you first started Tatreez Circle, there wasn't that much maybe, uh, interest, and then you mentioned that it suddenly boomed and, it became more [00:39:00] popular.
Can you tell us about that, that transition and how it happened? Like, did you see it gradually or was it because of Gaza, or how, how do you see it?
Joanna: I think it was in two stages. I think COVID played a big role where a lot of people were looking to come together in community, even if it was online, in Zoom meetings and pick up new skills that they've always wanted to try.
Um, and then with Gaza, of course, there was a new, a lot of, a lot of artists and makers were interested in integrating Palestinian embroidery into their work as a signifier of Palestinian identity. We have to keep in mind that Palestinian embroidery and Palestinian culture, and we've seen this with Gaza, is constantly under threat because [00:40:00] Palestinian embroidery is evidence of our indigeneity and of our existence.
And this counters the settler narrative. And what we've seen in Gaza, for example, with the destruction of, aside from the incredible loss of human life, there was the destruction of heritage sites of archives, universities, art studios, um, everything, everything. Quite literally, everything that had to do with the culture and life that existed there.
And this was intentional. They want to erase our culture, so that makes us want to hold onto it more, and that makes us want to preserve it more. There's an urgency. It's not a luxury, preserving our culture. There's an absolute urgency to [00:41:00] document, to record our culture. There's artists in the book, for example, um, from Gaza. Mohammed Alhaj is still there, and his studio was destroyed.
A lot of the artwork that is featured in his chapter were destroyed. You've got other artists, for example, uh, Mohammad Al-Hawajri and Dena Mattar, who are in the introduction of the book featured there. They risk their lives to collect as many paintings as they could before they left Gaza. Um, Maha Al-Daya, she's also in the book.
She has a chapter and she embroidered the evacuation maps that were dropped from the planes on the displaced people in Gaza telling them what was the so-called safe zones to go to. And she created an entire series of these maps and she started them while she [00:42:00] was there. So this is ways where we are using Palestinian embroidery to record and document what's happening in real time.
And yeah, the preservation becomes the most urgent thing.
Tala: True. And, um, moving on to the book, tell us more about how, um, how it started, and congratulations for its, uh, for its release. It was recently released in July, 2025. So tell us more about the beginnings, the, the original idea, how it started with you and how it was received.
Joanna: So the book, you know, we were talking a bit about the history and how important it is to understand the history of Palestinian embroidery.
Lots of people are taking workshops and learning about that, but they're not really talking about why they [00:43:00] feel this sense of connection to Palestinian embroidery, and this is why I felt it was really necessary to write this book, is because this conversation wasn't being had. People were talking about the history of the embroidery and how it changed after 1948, and this is also very important discussion, but they were leaving out how it was the artist that created the symbolism around the embroidery. It was the artist that allowed for it to become a signifier of Palestinian identity, and that also created the shift in, in the way Palestinian embroidery was perceived by women who wore the embroidery. So you had people in the cities, people in the diaspora wearing the embroidery proudly despite what social class they came from, because it shifted in meaning.
And this was the conversation I really wanted to have in the [00:44:00] book, so people would know about that and they would know how artists continue to reimagine the embroidery and reinterpret the embroidery and keep that, that going.
Tala: Mm-hmm. And to do that you feature almost 24 artists, if I'm not mistaken, how they documented embroidery within their, uh, works of art.
You feature Sliman Mansour, Nabil Anani, and, many others. Amer Shomali also comes to mind. So tell us more about how you chose these 24 artists, because I'm sure there were many more and you, had to limit them because you can't talk, about them all.
Joanna: Yeah. So, um, for me, I, I wanted to make sure that the artist's voice came out in their chapters.
So I was limited in the curation of artists to artists that I can interview, that I was able to reach out to and speak to and interview. [00:45:00] I wanted them to explain why they incorporate Palestinian embroidery in their artwork rather than me give my own interpretations of their work. It was, it was very important that they spoke for themselves. So the curation was limited to artists who were alive and who I was able to contact. There are a lot of other artists who are mentioned in the introduction, but the 24 artists that you speak of that have the artist chapters, these were the people who I was able to interview and I was looking for artists that spoke about Palestinian embroidery in different ways.
So, it wasn't just, oh, this person includes embroidery in their work, I'll put them in my book. The concepts that they were speaking about and the way they incorporated the embroidery was very important. [00:46:00] You have artists talking about everything from indigeneity to body politics, to challenging colonial and orientalist constructs.
You have artists that are talking about the material and the process of the embroidery. You have other artists that speak to preservation and celebrating the beauty of the embroidery. You have artists that use the embroidery to advocate for Palestine, for activism. So there's different ways that these artists use the embroidery and different ideas and concepts that are tied to it.
So even if the idea or concept that they're talking about in their artwork has nothing to do with Palestine, just that there is an inclusion of Palestinian [00:47:00] embroidery in their work signifies a connection to Palestine. Right? And I, I thought that it would be so wonderful to showcase all of these artists.
Tala: So Joanna, tell us more about the behind the scenes. Any interesting anecdotes you had, while collecting the information and interviews for the book.
Joanna: There certainly was a lot of chasing artists for high resolution photographs, but I won't get into that. Um, it was, it was really wonderful being able to meet so many different artists that incorporated Palestinian embroidery in their work and learning more about their process, learning more about why they included the embroidery in their work.
And if I wanna think about specific artworks that stood out to me, I would say Broken Weddings by Amer Shomali in the book, [00:48:00] and that's a very powerful piece. And this one actually stands out to a lot of people. And just to give you a little background on the work he drew inspiration from a antique wedding dress, a Palestinian embroidered antique wedding dress that was up for sale in an Israeli auction.
And the seller was the son of a man who was in the Haganah, in the terrorist militia groups that were part of the Nakba. And that made Amer ask questions like, what happened to the woman who spent so much time and energy creating this wedding dress? Her hopes, her dreams. If it's all right with you, I can actually read you what he wrote.
Tala: Yes, please.
Joanna: Um, 'cause he says it so beautifully. He [00:49:00] explains 'I reconstructed details of dresses from several depopulated villages using balls of thread. I replaced each stitch with a whole new ball that had never been used. Like the dresses not yet embroidered. Broken weddings, unperformed songs. Unbuilt homes, unborn children.
The balls of thread aligned like gravestones, like bags of corpses after a disaster like abandoned beehives, like dried wells. Threads, unable to liberate themselves from their balls to say what they have to say. Broken weddings, witnesses of possibilities of the amputated lives of 1948.'
Tala: Wow.
Joanna: Yeah, and you'll find so many other artworks that are so powerful that speak to, that speak to this sense of loss.
And sometimes [00:50:00] these things can be bittersweet, like I mentioned before, but there's also a lot of artworks that celebrate the beauty of our heritage. For example, artwork by Naqsh Collective where they, it's a design team of two sisters, Nisreen and Nermeen Abudail, and they create incredible works of art and design using stone, marble, wood, brass to, to preserve not just the motifs, but the stories in these mediums that unlike fabric, which comes apart and gets worn out, they're more permanent. And, and here you have a different approach to Palestinian embroidery where it's really about [00:51:00] preservation and about story. Another example is Everland by Steve Sabella.
It's a digital photo collage. And from his photographs of embroidery, he creates this stunning garden of of floral motifs that come together. And it's a celebration. It's a celebration of our heritage, of the beauty of the embroidery, but also looking towards, what would a liberated Palestine look like?
The joy that exists in that. And you have these different emotions that come out from all these different artworks and not just feeling and emotion, 'cause all of these artworks are so powerful, but also the ideas, the concepts behind the work are so [00:52:00] important to communicate and to get out there.
Tala: Yeah.
And what's, uh, lovely about the curation in the book is that you see how the different artists kind of converge with one another and how embroidery kind of evolves from one artist to another. So I really enjoyed that because it felt like a complete tapestry. It's not just like I'm looking at one piece of art. I'm looking at a collection that's preserving a holistic story.
So that was very interesting to me.
Joanna: Thank you.
Tala: Joanna, thank you so much for being with us. I'd love to know more about your future plans. You did mention that you're working on a project about learning tatreez through screens. I'm very much looking forward to that. But what else are you, uh, planning for?
What should we expect?
Joanna: Well, now that the book is, is published, I, I do want to put more focus [00:53:00] into my art practice. So this body of work, I'm very excited about it. And instead of cross stitch, which is what I've usually been using in, in my work, I'm using couching embroidery, um, but with unique mediums.
So you'll see it when it's, when it's ready.
Tala: Okay.
Joanna: So that, that I'm very excited about. I'm still writing and, and exploring tatreez in different ways and trying to find different ways to express ideas through this medium. So, yeah.
Tala: Nice. And uh, for those listening who are interested in joining the community of Tatreez Circle or attending any workshops, how can they get there?
How can they sign up?
Joanna: Well, you can, I always post it on Instagram so you can find me @thetatreezcircle. You can also find me at Joanna Barakat Art on Instagram. I also post it on [00:54:00] my website, which is joannabarakatart.com. So you, you can find me in both places.
Tala: Amazing. And we'll leave all these links in the description below.
Uh, thank you so much, Joanna. It was a pleasure, uh, talking to you.
Joanna: Thank you so much for having me.
Tala: So inshallah next time we get to meet in person
Joanna: Yes. Inshallah.