Tatreez Sewing Workshop | with Tara Hakim

Artist Tara Hakim is currently working on a large-scale collaborative textile rooted in Palestinian Tatreez embroidery, born from a return to fabric and handwork during a time of deep grief. Centered on the Bougainvillea plant—المجنونة (Al Majnooneh)—as a symbol of grounding and resilience, the piece began in Toronto, travelled to Jordan and Calgary, and now returns home once more.

We invite you to come and leave your mark on this living fabric of grief, love, and community.

While each of us will embroider our own section, we’ll be working on the same fabric, feeling one another’s movements, the subtle tugs and pulls that connect us. Through the repeated motion of stitching, alone and alongside each other, through shared stories, knowledge, and quiet coexistence, might we find ways to hold our grief, both individual and shared? Might we embroider something that remembers, resists, and heals?

No experience is needed. All materials will be provided, and everyone is welcome to drop in or stay as long as you like.

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Artist Bio:

Tara Hakim is a process-based artist residing in T’karonto, Canada. Of Palestinian heritage, born and raised in Jordan with an Austrian grandmother, Tara creates public displays of vulnerability that invite viewers to meditate on notions of self, diasporic existence, and the liminal spaces in-between—both physical and mental. Working across video, installation, performance, and, more recently, textiles and ceramics, she intertwines the complexities of cultural history and personal psychology with a meditative, playful, and tender approach.

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Gaza Biennale T’karonto Pavilion: Witnessing Sumud

Presented at A Space Gallery and Gallery TPW

November 13th to December 13th, 2025

Founded in spring 2024, the Gaza Biennale has emerged as a collective global art program with pavilion exhibitions being presented around the globe. T’karonto Pavilion: Witnessing Sumud, showcases the powerful work of Palestinian artists, created amidst unimaginable conditions in Gaza. Through devastation and the relentless siege of Gaza, artists continue to create—transforming grief into expression, pain into poetry, and destruction into determination. The T’karonto Pavilion: Witnessing Sumud emphasizes the importance of global solidarity in witnessing and affirming the unwavering perseverance (sumud) of the Palestinian people. This pavilion situates the struggle for survival, dignity, and freedom within a shared global context and the role of witnessing as an initial point of action. It emphasizes that solidarity is not only an act of empathy but of responsibility—an acknowledgment that the struggle for justice in Palestine is intertwined with the broader struggle for liberation everywhere.

A Space Gallery artists include: Alaa Abu Saif, Alaà Al Shawa, Liza Madi, Mosaab Abusal, Motaz Naim

Gallery TPW artists include: Imad Badwan, Jehad Jarbou, Ibrahim Al Sultan, Ashraf Sahwiel, Yahya Al-Shouli

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Gaza Biennale T'karonto is produced with the support of the City of Toronto through Toronto Arts Council. ​

Also check out other Arts events in Toronto, Workshops in Toronto, Exhibitions in Toronto.