DECEMBER 20, 2023 GRACE EBERT

Lekazia Turner, Jamaica (2022). Photo by Mark Pickthall. All images courtesy of Kirstie Macleod

Now complete, “The Red Dress” is a collaborative project featuring embroideries by hundreds of artisans around the world.

In her early 20s, artist Kirstie Macleod became intimately aware of the ways working with a shared purpose has the potential to form immediate bonds.

Macleod spent her childhood living around the world, moving from Venezuela to countries like Nigeria, Japan, and Canada, to name a few. At 21, she traveled to India, where she immersed herself in the country’s textile industry and craft traditions. She didn’t speak the language but found a connection, in part, through making. “I’d often be with people with whom I couldn’t communicate with words, but I could sit with them and stitch a jacket,” she told Crafts Council.

She clung to the idea that embroidery could serve as both a physical and symbolic link between people from different backgrounds, ideologies, and religions, and in 2009, she launched “The Red Dress,” a collaborative project featuring embroideries by hundreds of artisans around the world.

Embroideries by FanSina artisans, Egypt (2015) and Zenaida Aguilar, Mexico (2018)

In Egypt, about 50 Bedouin Jabaliya women who are part of the FanSina collective created herbal motifs with curved flourishes inspired by their Mt. Sinai surroundings. During an exhibition in Warsaw, a group of Ukrainian refugees melded long stitches with tight French knots to render a bright yellow sunflower with one petal in pale blue.[..]

Farhana Gabaly, Egypt (2015). Photo by Kirstie Macleod

Ukrainian refugees Nadia Vaipan and Natalia Volovyh, Galeria Salon Akademii (2022). Photo by Kirstie Macleod

More: 380 Artists, 51 Countries, 14 Years: A Community Embroidery Project Connects Women Around the Globe — Colossal