Rachel Dedman (b. 1989, London) is a curator, writer, and art historian.
Since 2019, Rachel has been the Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Recent projects for the V&A include displays for London Design Festival 2025, the exhibition Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine at V&A Dundee, the display Tatreez: Palestinian Embroidery, and exhibitions Jameel Prize: Moving Images and Jameel Prize: Poetry to Politics at V&A South Kensington. Rachel is the curator of the Jameel Fellowship programme at the V&A, a research residency for artists and designers from the Middle East, and edited the V&A commissioning platform Beirut Mapped.
Beyond the V&A, Rachel co-curated the 2024 edition of the State of Fashion Biennale: Ties that Bind, in Arnhem, the Netherlands, with Louise Bennetts. Rachel is the curator of the exhibition Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery for Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, and The Whitworth, Manchester, 2023-2024, and is curating a forthcoming exhibition for MoMu, Fashion Museum Antwerp.
From 2013-2019 Rachel was based in Beirut, Lebanon. Notable projects include At the still point of the turning world, there is the dance, for Ashkal Alwan’s Home Works Forum 8 at Sursock Museum, Lebanon, 2019; Shorthand: Nadim Karam, notes from the archive, A.MUSE.UM, Lebanon, 2019; A Thousand Hands: Legacies and Futures of Care in Brent, Kiln Theatre, London, 2018; Labour of Love: New Approaches to Palestinian Embroidery, Palestinian Museum, West Bank, 2018; and Midad: The Public and Intimate Lives of Arabic Calligraphy, Dar el-Nimer, Lebanon, 2017.
Rachel is co-founder and editor of polycephaly.net (a site which retired in 2025), and one third of Radio Earth Hold, a research and broadcast collective supported by the Serpentine Galleries and Nottingham Contemporary. She is widely published in academic and contemporary art contexts, and trained in the history of art at St John’s College, Oxford, and Harvard University, where she did her Postgraduate studies as the Von Clemm Fellow, 2012/13.
Email: racheljdedman@gmail.com
Please note I receive a high volume of emails, particularly about tatreez and its identification, and it may take some time for me to respond.
Since 2019, Rachel has been the Jameel Curator of Contemporary Art from the Middle East at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Recent projects for the V&A include displays for London Design Festival 2025, the exhibition Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine at V&A Dundee, the display Tatreez: Palestinian Embroidery, and exhibitions Jameel Prize: Moving Images and Jameel Prize: Poetry to Politics at V&A South Kensington. Rachel is the curator of the Jameel Fellowship programme at the V&A, a research residency for artists and designers from the Middle East, and edited the V&A commissioning platform Beirut Mapped.
Beyond the V&A, Rachel co-curated the 2024 edition of the State of Fashion Biennale: Ties that Bind, in Arnhem, the Netherlands, with Louise Bennetts. Rachel is the curator of the exhibition Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery for Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, and The Whitworth, Manchester, 2023-2024, and is curating a forthcoming exhibition for MoMu, Fashion Museum Antwerp.
From 2013-2019 Rachel was based in Beirut, Lebanon. Notable projects include At the still point of the turning world, there is the dance, for Ashkal Alwan’s Home Works Forum 8 at Sursock Museum, Lebanon, 2019; Shorthand: Nadim Karam, notes from the archive, A.MUSE.UM, Lebanon, 2019; A Thousand Hands: Legacies and Futures of Care in Brent, Kiln Theatre, London, 2018; Labour of Love: New Approaches to Palestinian Embroidery, Palestinian Museum, West Bank, 2018; and Midad: The Public and Intimate Lives of Arabic Calligraphy, Dar el-Nimer, Lebanon, 2017.
Rachel is co-founder and editor of polycephaly.net (a site which retired in 2025), and one third of Radio Earth Hold, a research and broadcast collective supported by the Serpentine Galleries and Nottingham Contemporary. She is widely published in academic and contemporary art contexts, and trained in the history of art at St John’s College, Oxford, and Harvard University, where she did her Postgraduate studies as the Von Clemm Fellow, 2012/13.
Email: racheljdedman@gmail.com
Please note I receive a high volume of emails, particularly about tatreez and its identification, and it may take some time for me to respond.