Here, embroidery is used to convey meaning rather than decoration. Through thread, the artists work with themes of memory, identity, and displacement, turning the medium into a way of reflecting on personal and collective experience.

Some of the works draw from family histories and archives, tracing what is remembered, lost, or transformed over time. Others engage with traditional techniques, using them to speak about cultural continuity and change. In some cases, embroidery becomes a way to process time itself.

Across these practices, thread is used to build images, but also to hold tension: between past and present, individual and collective, control and uncertainty. The works move between abstraction and figuration, but remain focused on how meaning can be constructed through material and process.

Margaux Derhy works between Paris and Morocco, drawing on her French and Moroccan-Berber background. Through painting and embroidery, she explores memory, migration, and layered identity.

Her work often engages with photographic archives and fragments of personal and collective history. She focuses on what is lost, altered, or left unspoken through processes of displacement and transformation.

She also runs an embroidery studio in Massa, where she works with and trains a team of local women, connecting traditional techniques with contemporary practice.

Majd Abdel Hamid is a Palestinian artist working with small-scale embroidery. His pieces are slow and process-driven, emphasising time, repetition, and imperfection.

The works often appear minimal or abstract, with visible traces of hesitation and incompletion. Rather than focusing on technical precision, he treats embroidery as a way of recording time.

His imagery ranges from abstraction to loosely defined figures and references to visual culture, creating a balance between personal process and broader political context.

İrem Yazıcı is a self-taught embroidery artist based in Turkey. Since 2014, she has developed a practice rooted in fantasy and surreal imagery.

Working from her home studio, she creates detailed textile pieces featuring imagined characters and scenes. Her work combines traditional techniques with a playful, narrative-driven approach.

Jordan Nassar is an artist of Palestinian descent based in New York. His practice centres on Palestinian embroidery, which he recontextualises through a contemporary visual language.

He collaborates with artisans in Palestine, using traditional cross-stitch techniques to create detailed, geometric compositions. While rooted in craft, his works function as paintings — structured and precise.

His imagery often combines landscape, pattern, and symbolism, reflecting on ideas of home, displacement, and belonging, and connecting personal identity with collective history.

Zainab Al Sabba is a Bahraini artist working across design, architecture, and textiles. Her practice is highly personal, moving between large-scale installations and embroidery.

She works with everyday materials, building sculptural forms and stitching onto canvas — at times physically connecting her body to the work itself. Each piece carries a distinct emotional and conceptual focus.

One of her works, "To escape?", explores the desire for solitude and introspection within the intensity of modern life, reflecting on the need to withdraw, pause, and create space for inner reflection.