With courage, tolerance, thread and needle, a self-taught Bangladeshi artist, Surayia Rahman, shared her skills with destitute young women, stirring social change, empowering lives and bringing traditional embroidery to an art form.

Surayia and some of her "girls"

She created exquisite tapestries and paintings that were presented as gifts to royalty and Heads of Government, and are found today in museums and private collections around the world.  But Surayia Rahman’s legacy may be more remembered for sharing her artistic talent with hundreds of destitute young women in Bangladesh whom she called her “living paintbrushes.”  Crossing rivers during the floods, riding for hours in rusted buses over muddy roads, these women came to her for work, work that enabled them to buy chickens or a piece of land, or to enroll their children in school.  Surayia helped change their lives.

Threads: The Art and Life of Surayia Rahman (working title) brings together the many social and historical stories depicted in Surayia’s tapestries, weaving her own personal story through the eras that she illuminated through her art.

Captured for the first time in stunning visuals, we see what drove Surayia to create and how she nurtured young women to bring the household craft of nakshi kantha embroidery to a new level of artistic refinement and perfection.

We delve into the rich traditions of Bengal through the stories that Surayia’s threads will tell. With its own vocabulary — symbols and patterns — nakshi kantha has brought forth the creativity of generations of women in this and past centuries.

We explore the obstacles that Surayia constantly overcame: family illness and death, conflict and riots, lack of art supplies. Throughout, she was determined, as she worked to support her family.

We go with her “girls” to the thread markets, to their workplace, and to a reunion with Surayia following her retirement from paintbrush, pen and needle.

We talk with Surayia and with those who knew her about the various facets of her life and art, weaving the story of a fascinating life journey, a triumph of spirit and the manifestation of her talent in the lives of others.

Surayia is now in her late seventies. Her imagination still explodes with designs and ideas about continuation, about eternity. Her mind travels back to all of the women who have extraordinary talent — such precise and descriptive stitches — and how she helped them to become self-reliant; to buy their own cow, some land, or a small house. What will happen now that she is no longer able to guide them daily?

She dreams. She imagines an artistic institution, where technique meets art, where young women will have a chance to show the world the brilliance that can be created from simple threads.