Stitched Stories is a series of eleven photographic portraits developed as part of a socially engaged workshop led by Khaled Barakeh in collaboration with asylum seekers and local fashion designers. Each portrait depicts one participant wearing a self-designed outfit created from secondhand clothing that was transformed during the workshop process.

The works explore clothing as a carrier of memory, identity, and personal history. Through gestures of stitching, alteration, and styling, the participants reclaimed discarded garments and reshaped them into expressions of individuality and belonging. Positioned between portraiture, fashion, and social practice, the series highlights the agency of the participants while reflecting on displacement, visibility, and self-representation.

The photographic works were presented alongside a performative fashion show in which participants walked across a catwalk constructed from flattened and stitched-together clothes, turning textile and performance into tools of collective expression and protest.

Portraits: Ahmed Osama (Sudan), Anfaal Almughallis (Yemen), Asraa al-Tmimi (Yemen), Hind Adnan Ali (Iraq), Mahsa Jahangirpour (Iran), Melav Rahim (Kurdistan), Omima Hasabelrsoul Ahmed (Sudan), Omaia Mortada Abdalla (Sudan), Raha Shafiei (Iran), Saba Barhoum (Syria), and Salwa Alsharabi (Yemen).