When Lina Barkawi began making her first thobe, she had no idea it would turn into a two-year endeavor. Barkawi ended up wearing the handmade dress for her wedding — but the traditional Palestinian outfit that she had meticulously sewed and stitched turned out to represent much more than countless hours of work. It brought into focus her own heritage, an endangered art form, and how she might play a role in preserving it.
“Sometimes it’s hard to convince publications to feature underground artists, so I decided to create my own zine,” photographer Richie Lee Davis says. Around LA, Davis is a known and loved force to be reckoned with — for his success as a photographer and stylist, and for his dedication as both a friend and fan of some of the city’s most prolific emerging acts. Whether he’s shooting, and styling, Ethel Cain for Interview Magazine or lounging in the green room with LA punk outfit the Paranoyds, Davis is supporting and engaging in an art form he is truly passionate about, and with the release of zine“Sabrina Zine, the “fanzine” of which he has published two volumes, he is taking that passion to the next level.
“Creating Sabrina has been an amazing outlet for me as an artist because I am able to combine all the musicians I truly admire in one… My inspiration for the zine is all of the amazingly talented musicians in the underground LA/NY music scene, and a lot of them are independent. It really shows you that their vision is truly their own.”
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Entirely self-published, with a focus on underground musicians making their way in the LA and NYC scenes, though they herald from all over the world, Davis dove headfirst into an art form that has been a foundational element of each coastal city since punk music was born. And in keeping with the music fanzine’s ’70s and ’80s roots, the goal was to present each of the 13 musicians, which he shot in his studio in Los Angeles, in a timeless fashion.
“The personal style they each carry is so inspiring to me because they come as they are
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Barkawi’s thobe is pale gray with densely embroidered stitches of orange, green, red, and light blue clustered on the front bodice and running down the sleeves and to the ankles. The Palestinian style of embroidery — called tatreez — is the centerpiece of the dress, designed and stitched to represent Barkawi’s heritage and also her personal identity and story. But developing the knowledge and skill to be able to express herself through tatreez wasn’t as easy as finding YouTube tutorials or browsing forums, a typical way people learn a craft or art form.
Palestinian embroidery is a centuries-old art form that’s passed between generations orally, like from mother to daughter or grandmother to granddaughter. But the art form’s survival has become more and more precarious — Israeli militia and settlers have displaced generations of Palestinians, who’ve fled or were expelled from their land. The dispossession has made handmade tatreez more and more rare and harder yet for Palestinians like Barkawi to discover and learn from. In that dearth, Palestinians are creating communal resources and digital spaces for each other in an attempt to digitize and reclaim the art form.
“I was super frustrated with the idea that there were not that many resources available to construct my own dress from scratch,” Barkawi says. “I found that to be really upsetting because it’s something so