In the face of unspeakable devastation, art becomes a powerful expression when words fall short.

As bombs fell on Gaza, a Palestinian woman somewhere pulled a red thread through white fabric. With every soul lost, hospital bombed and home razed in Gaza, a Palestinian hand was painstakingly memorialising it.

From Ramallah to Lebanon’s refugee camps and as far as New Zealand, Palestinian women have been embroidering 100 panels to create ‘the Gaza Genocide Tapestry’, a collective cross-stitched testimonial that refuses to let the world forget what is being done or to whom.

The Gaza Genocide Tapestry is a bold, albeit devastating, continuation of the award-winning Palestine History Tapestry (PHT), a collection of 100+ panels which tell the story of Palestine and Palestinians through traditional Palestinian embroidery.

This new chapter, under the stewardship of Palestine Museum and the new home of the PHT, chronicles the events of over two years of genocide in Gaza between 2023-2025 through.

At the heart of the tapestry lies ‘tatreez’, a centuries-old Palestinian embroidery tradition, which UNESCO added to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2021. The art of tatreez, once used to adorn wedding dresses, celebrate life and express tenderness and colour, is now recording mass graves, ruins and starvation.