These architectural thread-drawings  often collapse, fold, unravel back into thread – creating a tension between their identification with the rigid, architectural forms they reference and the soft, collapsible material they come from.

Synonyms

Baudrillard’s essay “Simulacra and Simulation” begins with a reference to a Borges story in which the cartographers push themselves further and further, to make a map of the empire, so scientifically exact- that it finally ends up being the same size as the empire itself. There is no space to store it, so the map has to be laid over the actual territory, point to point, covering the very thing it was meant to represent. People now interact with the symbol instead of the real, confusing the double for the thing itself. Eventually the map ages and crumbles, and its pieces start to merge with the territory, complicating the relationship between the ‘real’ and the symbolic.

“Synonyms” is about this exchange between two things which seem similar in subject matter and form but have different relationships to time, fragility and change.  Threads from an ethereal, background web converge and knot to manifest images of plant forms in the overall structure. From time to time, real dried plants appear over their thread-image counterparts, floating on the web with their temporal forms covering their blueprints. In time, these fragile, natural forms will mutate, perhaps crumble, letting go of their temporary forms to leave behind their ethereal registrations on the web.

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Soulmates  series

Soulmates unfolds the narrative of ‘completion’ in an interplay between two mirrored halves. It is a series of diptychs featuring incomplete plant forms. Each diptych combines real, dried plant fragments with thread embroidery to complete the missing portions. Each half of the diptych mirrors the other exactly, but interchanges the places occupied by plant and thread respectively, completing what is missing in the other. As the real plant in one panel starts to crumble and disappear over time, its counterpart serves as an ethereal registration (in thread) of the plant’s original form, preserving its essence. At no point – is either plant whole and yet each half holds the complete essence- weaving a narrative of wholeness, reflection, symmetry  and interconnectedness through botanical fragments and thread.

unfolds the narrative of ‘completion’ in an interplay between two mirrored halves. It is a series of diptychs featuring incomplete plant forms. Each diptych combines real, dried plant fragments with thread embroidery to complete the missing portions. Each half of the diptych mirrors the other exactly, but interchanges the places occupied by plant and thread respectively, completing what is missing in the other. As the real plant in one panel starts to crumble and disappear over time, its counterpart serves as an ethereal registration (in thread) of the plant’s original form, preserving its essence. At no point – is either plant whole and yet each half holds the complete essence- weaving a narrative of wholeness, reflection, symmetry  and interconnectedness through botanical fragments and thread.