Biography
Wafa Ghnaim is a Palestinian-American artist, researcher, writer, educator, and
businesswoman who began learning Palestinian embroidery from her mother,
award-winning artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim,
when she was two years old. Her first book, “Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery
and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora” (2018), documents the traditional
patterns passed to her by her mother. Wafa has since become a leading educator in the
field as the first-ever Palestinian embroidery instructor at the Smithsonian Museum, and
an artist-in-residence at the Museum of the Palestinian People
in Washington, D.C. In addition to her extensive scholarship, Wafa continues her mother’s
educational legacy through Tatreez & Tea, a global arts education
initiative she began in 2016. Wafa has been featured in major media outlets,
most recently in Vogue Magazine, naming her and her mother
“the world’s leading guardians of tatreez”. Wafa currently resides in Washington, D.C.
To learn more about the Tatreez & Tea project, go to www.tatreezandtea.com or follow on Instagram @tatreezandtea.
* Photograph by Carlos Khalil Guzman, 2020
