Farheen Fatima - MA Photography
We Carry Home in Threads
An exploration of memory, displacement, and resilience through Palestinian Tatreez
We Carry Home in Threads is a photographic and textile-based project that reimagines the traditional Palestinian art of Tatreez (embroidery) as a series of contemporary postcards. Each card carries a motif rooted in Palestinian culture—the Bethlehem Star, the Cypress Tree, the Heart, the Olive Tree, the Keffiyeh net, Barbed Wire, the Arch, and Feathers—woven with stories of loss, belonging, and return.
Every stitch becomes a language of survival.
Every motif, a fragment of home carried across exile.
By merging photography, fabric, and poetic text, the work transforms Tatreez from garment decoration into a portable archive of memory—a way of holding onto place when place itself has been taken. The postcard form speaks to travel, migration, and longing, while the embroidery grounds the work in Palestinian women’s practices of storytelling through thread.
This project asks: What does it mean to carry home when home is no longer accessible?
Through needle and photograph, We Carry Home in Threads offers an answer—we carry it in memory, in culture, in threads that refuse to break.
