Casa Árabe’s service courtyard -a space for transit and work- will become the site for creating ”Threads of Memory: An open window onto the future of Palestine,” an embroidery intervention that reinterprets Tatreez, the traditional embroidery of Palestine, on record since 2021 as part of the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and projects it into contemporary art in an unprecedented textile mural. 

This work is not only an aesthetic gesture: it is an act of vindication. Embroidery, historically relegated to the domestic realm of women, unfolds here as a language of resistance and testimony of identities that persist despite uprooting. Each stitch is memory. Each thread, a voice. Each pattern, an echo of a cultural heritage that refuses to be erased. 

From the age-old tradition of Tatreez, which encodes narratives of lineage, territory and belonging in each stitch, to the experimentation of contemporary art, this mural work transcends borders and eras. Embroidery is thus no longer just a form of decoration or a craft: it is a visual manifesto, a map of diaspora and resilience, a bridge between times and geographies. 

Within this context, the Castillejo sisters, inspired by the symbolic richness of Palestinian embroidery, focus on two key motifs: the kafg al-yad (palm of the hand) and at-tawriq (atauriques, or arabesques). Using both elements, they have conceived a symbolic door measuring 1 x 2 meters, suspended in space as an eloquent metaphor for the abolition of borders and an intercultural embrace. The hands that surround it are a tacit invitation to cross that invisible line. The arabesque that supports it traces a staircase in perpetual motion, a coming and going that evokes the Palestinian tradition of geometric design. The range of color selected establishes a subtle parallelism with Cordoba, where those same colors also permeate the art of the Tatreez. What they seek is to merge both identities, allowing each to recognize itself in the other. 

Almudena Castillejo 

A visual artist and muralist from Cordoba, her work is rooted in the exploration of portraiture and identity. She has had exhibitions displayed at international galleries and art festivals, and her work seeks a convergence between figuration and symbolic narration. 

Begoña Castillejo 

Textile designer and creator, her practice revitalizes crochet and Andalusian fringe work, rescuing the wisdom of past generations and bringing it into the present. Her pieces have received acknowledgment in both fashion and contemporary textile art. 

Maysun Cheikh Ali Mediavilla 

A Spanish-Palestinian artist and educator, her work focuses on the teaching and preservation of Palestinian embroidery as a cultural legacy. Her visual and pedagogical work has been essential in increasing awareness about this ancestral art. And this intervention is not just a work of art: it forms a dialogue, a woven resistance, an affirmation that art -like identity- does not fray, but is replenished with each new thread added to the weft. 

You can visit the installation throughout the Courtyards Festival of Cordoba, to be held in the city from May 5 to 18, at which time Casa Árabe will have special extended opening times (further information coming soon).