Textile Murals

Piecework

Happily freed from precision, this is cutting and sewing as riotous mantra.

In this ongoing body of work I draw on traditional quilt-piecing technique and minimalist imagery to create maximalist texture. Cast-off garments are sewn together, then repeatedly slashed apart and re-sewn, gradually fracturing and dispersing individual fabrics across the surface in a process that embodies the beauty and absurdity of repetition.

I am interested in the relationship between texture and time. The slow process of building a piece, whereby fabrics lose their singular quality to become part of a whole, parallels how time gives a harmonious patina to objects and memories. The prospect of decay is intrinsic to the work: these were made from living fibres and, like us, will change and deteriorate. Also like us, these pieces become more themselves with age.

Installations

Ruisseau

Ruisseau (English ‘brook’ or ‘creek’) pays homage to my ancestors and a certain stream in my grandmother’s native village in Ukraine that, as the story goes, played a central role in sealing her fate to emigrate to Canada. This work was commissioned for the 5th Biennale internationale du lin de Portneuf (2013) and was acquired by the Musée de la civilisation in Québec for its permanent collection.

Décorum, ou la broderie in situ

Décorum ou la broderie in situ (2011) was a solo exhibition at the Diagonale centre d’artistes in Montreal. Produced over a ten-month period from a household inventory of old clothing and fabric scraps, the textile wall imagery expands a small embroidery pattern to a public scale. Wall texts pose open-ended questions related to art, domestic work and their value. A small screen plays a looped video in which the artist ‘reads’ a pile of textile scraps, as if going through a pile of old family photographs, narrating each piece of cloth by recalling the story of the garment it used to be.