Gaza Tapestry at Venice Biennale: When Words Fail, Needles Speak
Jehan Alfarra
The 'Gaza Genocide Tapestry,' 100 embroidered panels each with 55,000 stitches by Palestinian women across Gaza, the West Bank, and refugee camps, will be displayed at the Venice Biennale from May to November. The project transforms the traditional tatreez embroidery into a live chronicle of destruction, with each panel portraying a fragment of the tragedy.
A singular artwork titled 'Gaza Genocide Tapestry' will be officially displayed at the Venice Biennale, one of the world's most prestigious art exhibitions, from 9 May through November. The piece consists of 100 embroidered panels, each containing 55,000 stitches, created by Palestinian women to record in real time the destruction in Gaza.
The project is a collaboration among journalist Moez Ali, co-founder of the Palestine History Tapestry Project, designer Ibrahim Muhtadi, and businessman Faisal Saleh from the American Palestine Museum. The initial idea came from Jan Chalmers, a British nurse who lived and worked in Gaza in the 1960s and launched a historical embroidery project for Palestine in 2011 in Oxford.
Each panel tells a fragment of the tragedy: a journalist weeping over his child's body, girls with empty pots trampled at a soup kitchen, a child crying as the world collapses around him. Images of Khalid Nabhan holding his dead granddaughter—'the soul of his soul'—and of Dr. Hussam Abu Safia walking toward an Israeli tank before vanishing forever are recreated through needlework.
According to Moez Ali, the tatreez embroidery tradition—recognized by UNESCO in 2021—was originally a way for Palestinians to preserve their identity after the Nakba of 1948 and has now become testimony. 'Embroidery is a decision that something is worth the effort—hours, days, weeks of labor. It is an assertion that it will not be lost among the countless images that flash before our eyes,' he writes.
Women in Gaza were initially the most active contributors, but as fighting escalated, they became subjects of the story rather than storytellers. Many lost contact, were repeatedly displaced, materials could not enter Gaza, and completed panels could not be sent out. Yet the project continued with Palestinian women in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Jordan.
The embroidery group in the Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon, including Iman Shehabi, Basma Natour, and dozens of other women, said the project 'restored' a part of their 'dignity.' 'It is a space where heritage beats strongly, where our needles suture both pain and hope,' they wrote in a letter to organizers after completing the panels.
The Venice Biennale will display the work at Palazzo Mora under the title '- - - - - - - - - - -' and the subtitle 'Gaza - No Words - See The Exhibit.' Moez Ali admits to a complex feeling about the selection: both honored and paradoxical that art becomes a record of atrocities in real time while political systems fail.
