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Connecting Threads
Embroidered Narratives from Afghanistan and the Diaspora
Stickereien aus Afghanistan – Stickarbeit mit geometrischen Mustern in Braun- und Beigetönen. Darunter Text: „VERBINDENDE FÄDEN - CONNECTING THREADS“.
© Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Azita Ibrahimi
How can memories be preserved when one’s native home is lost? What kinds of stories become inscribed into textile surfaces through experiences of migration, exile and cultural transformation?
The exhibition Connecting Threads explores embroidery as a cultural practice, a carrier of knowledge, and a medium of collective memory within Afghan diasporic contexts. At its centre are embroidered textiles, textile objects and narrative fragments situated between personal experience and cultural archive. The exhibited works open perspectives onto forms of female knowledge transmission and textile traditions that acquire new meanings under conditions of migration.
In Afghanistan, embroidery is far more than ornamental decoration. Across generations, patterns, colour compositions and textile techniques have functioned as forms of cultural coding, social belonging and familial remembrance. Within contexts of exile and diaspora, these functions shift: textile practices become sites of self-positioning, expressions of loss and continuity, and media of cultural self-assertion within transnational realities of life.
The exhibition brings together artistic, biographical and cultural-historical perspectives, asking how material culture participates in processes of memory, identity formation and migration. Textile works and personal narratives render visible what often remains absent from official histories: the quiet, everyday practices of preserving, transmitting and rearticulating cultural belonging.
Curatorial Team
The exhibition is curated by Melanie Krebs and Azita Ibrahimi.
Azita Ibrahimi is an artist and art historian from Herat, Afghanistan. She is currently pursuing her doctoral research at the Central Asia Institute of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on transformations in Afghan embroidery practices, particularly within Afghan communities in Germany. Her scholarly and artistic practice profoundly shapes the exhibition, connecting questions of material culture with contemporary debates on diaspora, memory and transcultural aesthetics.
Melanie Krebs is curator for the North Africa, West and Central Asia Department at the Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum). Her research interests are material culture, identity and globalisation, particularly as found in Central Asia.
Muslim Cultural Week 2026
Connecting Threads is thematically linked to the Muslim Cultural Week 2026 and will be on view from 26 September 2026 through summer 2027 on the lower level of the Forschungscampus Dahlem (Research Campus Dahlem).
A special exhibition of the Foschungscampus Dahlem – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
The exhibition Connecting Threads explores embroidery as a cultural practice, a carrier of knowledge, and a medium of collective memory within Afghan diasporic contexts. At its centre are embroidered textiles, textile objects and narrative fragments situated between personal experience and cultural archive. The exhibited works open perspectives onto forms of female knowledge transmission and textile traditions that acquire new meanings under conditions of migration.
In Afghanistan, embroidery is far more than ornamental decoration. Across generations, patterns, colour compositions and textile techniques have functioned as forms of cultural coding, social belonging and familial remembrance. Within contexts of exile and diaspora, these functions shift: textile practices become sites of self-positioning, expressions of loss and continuity, and media of cultural self-assertion within transnational realities of life.
The exhibition brings together artistic, biographical and cultural-historical perspectives, asking how material culture participates in processes of memory, identity formation and migration. Textile works and personal narratives render visible what often remains absent from official histories: the quiet, everyday practices of preserving, transmitting and rearticulating cultural belonging.
Curatorial Team
The exhibition is curated by Melanie Krebs and Azita Ibrahimi.
Azita Ibrahimi is an artist and art historian from Herat, Afghanistan. She is currently pursuing her doctoral research at the Central Asia Institute of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin on transformations in Afghan embroidery practices, particularly within Afghan communities in Germany. Her scholarly and artistic practice profoundly shapes the exhibition, connecting questions of material culture with contemporary debates on diaspora, memory and transcultural aesthetics.
Melanie Krebs is curator for the North Africa, West and Central Asia Department at the Ethnologisches Museum (Ethnological Museum). Her research interests are material culture, identity and globalisation, particularly as found in Central Asia.
Muslim Cultural Week 2026
Connecting Threads is thematically linked to the Muslim Cultural Week 2026 and will be on view from 26 September 2026 through summer 2027 on the lower level of the Forschungscampus Dahlem (Research Campus Dahlem).
A special exhibition of the Foschungscampus Dahlem – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Runtime: Sat, 26/09/2026 to Mon, 08/03/2027
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