A Group of Women at an Embroidery Course, Jerusalem, the 1970s, Omar al-Qasim Collection, ©The Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
A two-day program of events to present the e-publication Collective Study in Times of Emergency
On Wednesday, 29 January 2025 you are invited to a day-long workshop of Palestinian embroidery The Protest Dress. Palestinian embroidery turned from a practice that was done at home for personal use to a political practice and a way to counter-map Palestine after the 1948 Nakba. For instance, the intifada dress emerged a few months after the first Intifada (uprising) in 1987, it had the Palestinian map along with the Palestinian flag, olive branches and the Dove of Peace next to the traditional motifs and political slogans. Palestinian women embroidered these dresses and wore them in the protests, they stitched the Palestinian flag and wore it when it was banned.
The workshop will be run by Nour Shantout, an artist, researcher and educator. She was born in Damascus, Syria in 1991, she is based in Vienna since 2015. She received the Helen EL Khal prize (2014), and her diploma of fine arts at the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien in 2020. She was a visiting lecturer at IZK, Architecture Faculty of the Graz University of Technology (2022–2024), and at the institute for Transcultural Studies, Angewandte (2023–2024). Her articles have appeared in JEEM, Aljumhuriya and elsewhere.
Nour uses Palestinian embroidery to create contemporary embroidered works that reflect social and political challenges of the region. Her work is situated in continuity with the political application of Palestinian embroidery, a practice that emerged out of the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Furthermore, her practice centers around themes of subjugated heritage, counter-memory and history, labor and alienation, from a post-colonial feminist perspective.
In this workshop the participants will learn about the history of Palestinian embroidery in relation to protest and to the anti-imperialist feminist movement in Palestine. Nour Shantout will teach two different stitches.
The outcome of the workshop will be a collective piece.
Lunch will be provided, but you can also join us only in the morning or afternoon.
Please register at recepcija.MSUM@mg-lj.si.
