Maraya Art Centre invites everyone to attend SILA – All That Is Left to You, a powerful group exhibition running through 5 January 2026. Co-curated by Cima Azzam, Noor Suhail, and Rula Alami, the show reimagines tatreez, a centuries-old Palestinian embroidery tradition, as a living visual language of identity, memory, resistance, and resilience.
The Arabic word sila (صلة) means “connection,” a theme at the heart of the exhibition: stitching together personal narratives and collective histories, ancestral knowledge and contemporary creativity, tradition and transformation. Rather than presenting tatreez as static heritage, the works on view explore it as a dynamic archive of lived experience, rooted in village life and transmitted across generations, often through the hands of Palestinian women for whom embroidery has long been a means of expression, belonging, and cultural continuity.
The exhibition features 25 artists and designers who respond to tatreez across a rich spectrum of media, from textiles and sculpture to installation, painting, sound, and multimedia works. Many of the displayed pieces emerge from direct collaboration with embroiderers from the Inaash Association in Lebanon, an organisation that supports Palestinian refugee women, ensuring that the gestures of craft and continuity remain central to SILA’s narrative.
Across the galleries, traditional motifs are expanded, interrupted, and reinterpreted. Geometric patterns appear in metal and wood, grid-like stitches echo in sound compositions, and embroidered forms become sculptural and conceptual statements. Some art pieces acknowledge the ongoing struggles facing Palestinian communities, while others celebrate hope, resilience, and cultural regeneration in the face of adversity.
Among the featured creatives are Lebanese artist Katya Traboulsi, whose Perpetual Identities series transforms mortar shells from the Lebanese Civil War into handmade replicas representing different countries and cultures; Palestinian artist Hazem Harb, who uses gauze as a material to narrate stories of endurance and survival; Palestinian-Canadian artist Samar Hejazi, whose ethereal spatial interventions evoke impermanence, fragmentation, and continuity; and Palestinian artist Samia Halaby, a pioneering figure in Arab abstraction, celebrated for her vibrant geometric compositions.
Also featured is Liane Al Ghusain, who presents Womb Amulets, a series of 29 clay spheres inspired by her grandmother’s cross-stitch practice. Each sphere, composed of two stitched halves, contains coded prayers referencing 29 Palestinian women held in illegal prisons. The exhibition further includes works by Italian-Lebanese artist and writer Cristiana de Marchi. She uses varied stitching techniques across different surfaces to draw attention to issues such as borders, national identities, and human-made confinements.
To get more information about SILA: All That is Left to You, please visit the official web page of the exhibition.
In addition, you might be interested in viewing The Only Way Out Is Through: The Twentieth Line.
