A tapestry of 50,000 Palestinian names will be exhibited at the Voices of Palestine Festival in north London on Saturday.
Mary Evers, 66, began the Stitch Their Names Together project to voice the Palestinians’ struggle and shed a light on the lives lost during the war in Gaza.
The tapestry, which is being display at PalMusic’s festival at Kings Place on 1 November, is designed to empower people to speak up, as well as affirm Ireland-born and Palestine-raised Evers’ identity, moral beliefs, and values.
She said: “I decided to be Palestinian and realised that all my life I hadn’t really felt centered around where I was from.
“You’re from the world you know, but everyone wants to define you.
“But [Palestine], that’s where my heart belongs and where I feel strongest, so I started stitching.”
Mary was born in Dublin, but grew up in the Middle East as her father, former Galway gaelic football star Frank Evers, served as a UN field officer in the region.
The activist has maintained a deep-rooted connection to the Palestinians, as she grew up in Jerusalem and attended a Catholic school called Notre Dame de Sion in the Old City, which shut down when Israeli forces took control after the Six-Day War in 1967.
She said: “I don’t remember anything about war or aggression, and after ‘67 we went to live in Cyprus, so when we came back, I remembered the soldiers everywhere, all around the Old City with their guns up high.
“It became a kind of natural presence.”
The inspiration for Evers’ tapestry came when she visited an exhibition by Bangladeshi artist Yasmin Jahan Nupur at London’s Tate Modern, which used embroidered tablecloths to highlight the aftermath of British colonisation in Bangladesh.
That intrigue led to her looking into artisan crafts, and how patterns could represent someone’s heritage, relationship status, or resistance.
Women in Palestine would use their traditional embroidery, called Tatreez, to document the killing and displacement of their people.
Evers said: “It was during the Second Intifada when they were prevented from flying the Palestinian flag.
“So the women started to use those three colours within their Tatreez on their dresses in a subversive way.
“That’s why I used the three colours and my cloth.”
The project, which was also exhibited at the 50th anniversary of Westival in County Mayo, reflects Evers’ loving childhood, and her integration into the international and local community.
She said: “We used to go to this place in the Old City called the Danish Tea House.
“You would go there and drink mint tea, and as young teens, we thought it was rather sophisticated.
“I never felt in any way worried about being amongst the Palestinians, they were like my family. Everyone is kind, and every house you go into offers you a cup of tea even when they have nothing.
“We’ve even seen it in the last two years, the horror, even people living along the rubble are offering what they have to someone else.”
The Stitch Their Names Together project aims to get more people to speak out and not to be afraid to use their voice during times of injustice.
Evers said: “This will give us a position to reinforce to people that this is not about religion, this is not about politics, it is about art.
“It’s about respecting the people in Gaza, and what our exhibition does is it brings to the conscious mind the reality of the numbers.”
Saturday’s Voices of Palestine Festival features a mixture of art, literature and music in a celebration of Palestinian culture and heritage.
PalMusic UK chairman Wissam Boustany said: “During these desperate times, PalMusic UK is proud to be presenting the human face of Palestine through the Voices of Palestine Festival at Kings Place.
“We will shine a bright light on Palestinian talent, identity and aspiration for a better future.”
For more details on the Voices of Palestine festival, visit the Kings Place website.
Feature image credit: Stitch Their Names Together
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