Information
ARTIST BIO
I am a multi-media artist who has been born and raised in London, who combines fine art with craft. My multi-media practise explores feminist ideas such as The Male Gaze, the performativity of the feminine and how damaging the current media environment is to girls and women. I am also interested in how beauty and femininity are constructed through both contemporary visual culture and throughout the history of art. I worked with textiles throughout my degree and currently it is a primary medium in my practise. My textile practise values community at its core, with craft and humour being used as a tool to aid healing from the late-capitalist patriarchal society that we live in.
I teach embroidery workshops around London in a variety of spaces such as bars, university classrooms, workshop spaces, and art galleries. These classes usually attract a wide range of people and encourage connections between individuals whilst I guide them through a number of stitches ranging from beginner to more advanced. I believe that these classes are a great way to battle the dangerous rise of individualism and disconnection amongst the population and teach them a skill that is healing and being lost amongst the rapid digitalisation of society.
I use embroidery in my practise to communicate personal thoughts and bigger social issues. I taught myself embroidery during lockdown as a mode to calm and heal from stressors and haven’t been able to put down the needle since. I believe that embroidery and needlework have great benefits for mental health and it is intertwined with the collective history of women all over the globe.
My works take on a diarist format as I explore female identity and traditional concepts of femininity. I often exploit the delicacy and domesticity of embroidery, beading and knitting by producing pieces that watch the spectator back, denying voyeurism and passivity. I subvert the traditional use of embroidery as a mode to keep women with their hands busy and minds idle. I work to give a voice for women and draw attention to their viewpoint, one so often ignored and dismissed. I explore and overtly deny the ideals of what a woman should be and brings women’s voices into the public realm.
I draw on my own lived experience of being in a woman’s body in an image obsessed culture as well as addressing the pain that living in a patriarchal society can cause. I aim to reclaim and modernise the female history of textiles and embroidery by engaging in a larger social commentary of what society expects from women, to be sweet, demure and docile.
The materiality of my pieces also link my work to the modern day by using sequins, beads, ribbons and tulle. I thus provide a connection between the feminine roots of craft and textiles. I want to engage in the paragone between craft and art by elevating such skills and media which is so often looked down upon as feminine and lowly, not heralded as masculine ‘high art’. I combine oil paint and embroidery to physically embody this paragone, and show that both practises are just as valuable and visually interesting as each other.