Gazan artist preserves homeland through embroidery

Maha Al-Daya, a Palestinian dress embroiderer, left Gaza for France after months of Israeli bombing began in October 2023.

The 50-year-old artist uses embroidery to preserve the memory of her homeland and its people. She lost 20 years of work, around 50 embroidered dresses, and a planned fashion show when the war started. Al-Daya arrived in France in January 2025 through the “Pause” program, which supports exiled thinkers and artists.

Living in Paris with her husband and four children, she carries with her what she could save from her previous life in Gaza, including a black shirt embroidered with green and orange cotton threads depicting a tree of life. Palestinian embroidery represents more than a traditional craft, it is a way of telling the history and identity of the women who create it, with colors and patterns indicating their region and social status.

However, Al-Daya’s artistic life changed dramatically after the war. In her Paris studio, she now creates maps of Gaza and its destroyed areas, recreating evacuation notices, complete with electronic symbols and instructions, onto large pieces of white cloth. She sees these maps as a painful paradox, transforming them with needle and thread into documents that preserve the memory of the place.

Al-Daya says her work cannot save lives or retain the scent of destroyed homes, but it can become “a visual archive of our existence.” She uses colors to represent the war’s impact: gray for destruction, black for mourning, and red for blood. She titled her project “The Path of Pain,” and began sketching maps on a tent during displacement in Gaza in early 2024.