COMMON THREADS
Installation views of Common Threads series at tender material exhibition, Dienstegebäude Art Space, Zurich, Switzerland, 2024. Curated by Maria Sorensen.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Throughout my career, I have made narrative visual stories about women, for women. Inspired by teaching history of artists/activists Gentileschi through to Guerrilla Girls, my instinct is to continue contributing to their reframing of history, amplifying female voices within the art canon.Recently I researched the advances for women made by the early Feminist artists and how the overturn of Roe versus Wade in 2022, suggests we might be moving backwards, losing some of their hard-won victories. The stitched figures are a salute to the 1960’s - 1990’s Feminist artist icons who used their bodies as material creatively and artistically to break down barriers, taboos, restrictions, oppressive systems, and ideologies.
My most recent series, Common Threads, consists of simple pressure prints of dresses overlaid with embroidered contour drawings of female bodies. As a photographer and multidisciplinary visual artist, I am attracted to the photographic X-Ray quality of the dress imprints and the interplay of multiple perspectives, eye games between the ghostly print and the contour stitching of the liberated figure that is not enclosed by the dress, using nakedness and vulnerability as contemplative tools of resistance.
Overall, my mission is to slow down, preserve and celebrate human touch, materiality, physical realities and honor the memories embedded in each garment. Referencing these artists and their performances reminds me of the importance of questioning imposed standards and the accepted status quo, of following our own creative vision, and standing up to injustices in any little ways, while accepting ourselves as we are.
