Abstract for Textile Society of America Symposium

September 2002

 

 

 

Re-inventing cultural heritage:

Palestinian traditional costume and embroidery

since 1948

 

 

 

Prior to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, the ornate traditional costumes worn by the Arab village and bedouin women of Palestine were designed from the finest of fabrics, both locally woven and imported.  Heavily embroidered and appliqued, each garment became an individual work of art.  Palestinian costume also contained an intricate communication system expressing the wearer's status, wealth and geographic origin.

 

Although Palestinian traditional costume was almost completely lost in the decades following the events of 1948, two major independent developments in the 1980s led to a cultural revival.  The establishment of refugee camp embroidery projects assisted in providing income for Palestinian women as well as promoting traditional Palestinian culture in the form of embroidery.  Embroidered dress experienced a further revival in the late 1980s during the Intifada uprising, when it was used by Palestinian women to express national pride and as a means of expressing symbolic defiance against the Israeli occupation.  Palestinian traditional dress and embroidery has also become an enduring culturally recognisable symbol for Palestinians in the international diaspora who wish to maintain their separate Palestinian identity.

 

This paper examines the history of the last fifty years of Palestinian costume, with emphasis on the events of the last twenty years.  It studies the development of refugee camp embroidery projects throughout the Palestinian region, and the products that reflect the circumstances of each project.  It documents the extraordinary nationalist costumes and textiles of the Palestinian intifada, and evaluates the effective use of Palestinian costume and embroidery as a metaphor for loss and exile amongst various Palestinian communities now scattered throughout the world.

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Jeni Allenby, formally a curator at the National Gallery of Australia (where her last exhibition was Arabesque: the mythology of Orientalism), is director of the Palestine Costume Archive in Canberra, Australia, a research centre/museum that tours travelling exhibitions and educational programs of Middle Eastern cultural heritage worldwide (www.palestinecostumearchive.org).  She has two post graduate research degrees on Palestinian costume and her monograph on Palestinian costume and embroidery since 1948 will be published in late 2003.  She has also curated and written the catalogues for the Archive's travelling exhibitions Portraits without names: Palestinian costume, Secret Splendours: women's costume in the Arab world and Symbolic defiance: the costumes and textiles of the Palestinian intifada.