Manifesto Manifesto

02 / Memory

Tatreez: A Living Archive Tatreez: A Living Archive

Tatreez, the traditional Palestinian art of embroidery, originated as a collective female language. Every symbol, every variation of red, every floral or geometric motif belonged to a village, a landscape, a community. Cypress trees, olive branches, mountains, seeds, fish-nets, and stars carried the memory of a place; the land itself was preserved in the cloth and passed down from generation to generation.

The Nakba not only shattered the social fabric of Palestinian life through the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland, but also transformed the conditions that had sustained this communal practice. Dispossession, exile, and material hardship made the continuation of tatreez increasingly difficult. Yet the tradition did not disappear. In refugee camps and throughout the diaspora, it was preserved, adapted, and reimagined, becoming a living archive of Palestinian memory and a testament to decades of resilience under settler-colonial domination.

Tatreez acquired an increasing political significance as embroidered garments became visible markers of Palestinian identity and cultural continuity. The stitches preserve the names and landscapes of erased and depopulated villages, carrying aspirations for return. During the First Intifada, when Palestinian national symbols were banned, women embroidered flags, maps, and words of resistance onto clothing. Fabric became a political surface, a collective body, and a declaration of existence and resistance.

03 / Responsibility

From Witnessing to Action From Witnessing to Action

This project centres on the role of art in expressing defiance, preserving memory and identity, and resisting erasure within the ongoing struggle for Palestinian liberation. These video projections seek not only to amplify the language of tatreez and the histories it carries, but also to transform witnessing into action. While these embroideries allow Palestine to speak to us, our responsibility is to respond with solidarity.

04 / Solidarity

Supporting the PHRC Supporting the PHRC

For this reason, this project supports the Palestinian Humanitarian Response Centre (PHRC), a grassroots, Palestinian-led organisation dedicated to supporting children in and from Gaza as they heal and rebuild their childhood amidst ongoing genocide, dispossession, and forced displacement. Since October 2023, the PHRC has provided trauma-informed psychosocial support to Palestinian children and families in Gaza and Cairo. Through creative learning, theatre, art, play, and cultural activities, the organisation fosters healing, resilience, and a sense of belonging.

Learn more about the PHRC and donate directly to support their mission: palestinehumanitarianresponse.com/donate.

At the heart of this shared effort lies a simple truth: the path to liberation begins with nurturing the seeds of the future, ensuring they grow healthy, strong, and steadfast.

05 / Collective effort

With Gratitude With Gratitude

The project extends its heartfelt gratitude to everyone who contributed to its realisation by supporting the creation of the portable video-mapping device. Thank you for believing in the power of images, for making space for surprise, and for nurturing an art that belongs not to stages, but to the streets.

06 / The streets

Reclaiming Public Space Reclaiming Public Space

Through this device, a language of identity and resistance is brought into the urban space. This underground action emerges from a desire to reclaim public space through the body and physical presence. At a time when experience is increasingly absorbed into the digital realm, projecting these embroideries onto the city creates a tangible threshold for attention, encounter, and reflection. It removes images from the logic of speed and consumption, restoring them to a situated, vulnerable, and shared dimension.

The projection is ephemeral, yet it requires a body to be present: someone who passes by, pauses, looks up, and inhabits a space alongside others. For a moment, the city shifts its function. It becomes a site of memory, witnessing, and solidarity.

Palestinian embroideries thus emerge as clandestine luminous presences – not celebratory monuments, but persistent traces that affirm the right of bodies, stories, and cultures to remain visible, to endure, and to continue inspiring the world around them.