Suzhou embroidery (Su Xiu) is one of China’s most celebrated forms of intangible cultural heritage. Often presented through its exceptional techniques, aesthetics, and finished works, it is also a living practice continually shaped by the people who make it.
Stitching Lives shifts attention from embroidery as a fixed cultural artifact to the practitioners whose skills, aspirations, memories, and creative decisions sustain and transform the craft. Featuring embroiderers from different generations, genders, and social backgrounds, the exhibition shows how inherited techniques and aesthetic traditions are interpreted anew in response to changing lives, markets, and cultural environments.
Drawing on cultural anthropology, oral history, photography, and material culture research, the exhibition brings together embroidery works, tools, photographs, and practitioners’ own accounts. This interdisciplinary approach connects the material dimensions of the craft with the human stories behind it: how embroiderers develop individual styles; how embroidery becomes part of their livelihoods and identities; how everyday practice remakes tradition; how state and market changes affect the outcome of cultural heritage.
The project’s innovation lies in treating embroiderers not simply as custodians of heritage, but as creative agents. By centering their voices and experiences, it offers a fuller account of how cultural traditions endure – not through preservation alone, but through ongoing interpretation, adaptation, and negotiations.
The exhibition contributes to Suzhou’s cultural life by documenting and amplifying perspectives that are often absent from official heritage narratives. It creates a space for public dialogue about the changing meaning of Su Xiu and recognizes the diverse people whose work ensures that this craft remains vibrant and relevant.
