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Fabrics
Fabrics
Fabric has always felt to me like a second skin. I have always been intrigued by the world of fashion, the artistry and creativity that exists within the space, I have always felt like art and fashion exist in one and the same space. With aspects of both worlds crossing and interacting with each other — a material that exists between the world and the body, soft yet strong, fragile yet enduring. It carries memory, absorbing every touch, every crease, every moment of wear. My use of fabric began as something practical but quickly revealed itself to be deeply personal. Thread by thread, fabric became both a material and a metaphor — of holding, of protection, of vulnerability, of time.
Working with fabric feels like working with something alive. It resists and gives, stretches and unravels, it teaches me patience and persistence. I find myself listening to it, learning its language, not through words and sounds, but touch, allowing my other senses to see something my eyes cannot. At the same time respecting each pieces capabilities as well as nurturing them to become something more than what they are. Some fabrics collapse under the slightest pull, while others hold on stubbornly; some fray beautifully, opening up new textures, while others resist transformation. Each carries its own voice, its own history, its own capacity to endure change.
I return to fabric again and again because it mirrors the complexities of being human. It shelters, but it also constrains. It conceals yet reveals. It holds us together but also has the capacity to fall apart. In my work, fabric becomes a vessel for these contradictions — a way to make visible what is often felt but unseen.
Through fabric I build, destroy, stitch back, unravel — tracing cycles of transformation and renewal, vulnerability and resistant. It is material that allows me to weave my presence into it, to leave my touch embedded within its surface, to connect the physical with the emotional. For me, fabric is not just what I work with, it is what I work through.
Distressing technique
Distressing technique
How I discovered this technique was, how I like to put it, half accident, half intrigue. One morning snagging a shirt I was wearing on sharp corner as I was rushing to leave to get to a lecture on time. The fabric began to unravel; my intrusive thoughts took over and I began to pull on the fabric over and over. Watching this fabric unravel, becoming more fragile and delicate but never completely falling apart, never disconnecting or separating. Holding its form, though it appeared different, it was still the same piece of fabric that began as a shirt.
What I first thought of as an act of destruction and weaking, thinking I was taking strength away from the fabric to something fragile and needing to be handled with care. Only to realise that was not the case at all, little did I know I had just discovered a technique that I would carry my work to new places I never thought possible and would carry me on a journey through patience and transformation. It has become a vessel for me as the artist to connect the process of creating and the final work into one. Having my touch embedded within the very fabric of my work, leaving my touch and presence as a ruminating essence on every work I create.
Even more so, being someone with an anxiety disorder certain habits have engrained themselves into my subconscious. For example, picking at my cuticles and always needing to keep my hands busy to control my overthinking and my overactive mind, which makes me a very fidgety person. I have been able to translate this into my practice; through the distressing of fabrics, I am able to sit for hours pulling and stretching the fabric to create completely new textures and test the limits of its capabilities – experimenting with many types of fabric discovering the textures that are created through the distressing process. My practice has become a control for anxiety, further demonstrating the therapeutic aspect of my work. The repetition of sitting in a state of hyper fixation of stretching these fabrics to their limits, not to make them weaker, but to witness their resilience.
For me, it is this intimate process to channel me, my work and the viewer into one, connected together through layers that reach beneath the surface of the physical, into a connection that brings the emotional into play, a deeper feel of connect, a feeling in the soul.
Plaster
Plaster
I find it so intriguing how events that seem like accidents ignite my creative spark, in fact I’m beginning to call them, “happy little accidents”. Like with fabric, plaster has always felt like a material suspended between forms — solid yet malleable, temporary yet enduring. When I work with plaster, I am both witness and creator, pressing and pouring the plaster between, over and under the distressed fabric. This however is where my control ends, as the plaster dries within and amongst the fabric and I begin pulling and cracking the fabric and plaster. I lose all control, unable to know or anticipate how it will break, which parts will stay, and which pieces will fall off. It is a medium that demands presence; it asks for patience, for attention, for a willingness to embrace imperfection. Allowing the pieces that want to fall, fall and the crack to grow as much or as little as they want.
What draws me to plaster is its capacity to capture moments, to hold forms in a suspended state between fragility and strength. It is heavy yet yielding, soft when wet, brittle when dry, and in that tension I find a reflection of fragility and strength. I leave traces of touch, gestures, and time within the material itself. Each mark becomes a record, a residue of intention and accident, control and surrender.
Plaster allows me to explore the body and the space it inhabits. Containing traces of past selves, that speak to both vulnerability and resilience. It becomes a vessel for presence — mine, the material’s, and the viewer’s — layered together in a dialogue that moves beyond appearance only.
For me, plaster is not just a medium, it is a process of transformation. It asks me to slow down, to focus, to be in the act of creation and reflection simultaneously. Its capacity to hold and fracture mirrors the emotional landscapes I explore, giving shape to the delicate balance between strength and fragility, presence and absence. To not hid our cracks but to embrace them, for everything they are and can become.
These unpredictable materials ignite my intrinsic motivation, allowing me to engage with their randomness. I often ask myself, “How can I relinquish more control?” Combining plaster of Paris with distressed cotton and polyester fabric creates a playful interplay of textures and light. Starting with the repetitive, therapeutic process of distressing the fabric calms my mind and eases my anxiety.
As my mind eases, my intrinsic motivation surfaces through pouring the watered-down plaster of Paris over the laid-out distressed fabric and letting it dry. Due to the watery consistency of the plaster, it possesses the ability to flow over, in between, and under the distressed fabric.
Furthermore, when the plaster is dry, it is sealed to the fabric in a balance of stability and fragility. This stage of the process allows for me to engage in the act of play, using different methods to stretch and crack the dried plaster and fabric. If my inner child would jump on the bed, I jump on my artwork, allowing the piece to crack and stretch in uncontrollable ways.
Fabric coil technique
Fabric coil technique
I use this technique of distressing and manipulation for the woven fabrics, fabrics that contain a weft (the threads going across) and the warp (down or vertical threads). This technique is a little easier than the previous, but still, my patience is tested, and the end product of all the individual threads opens the door for opportunities that are unlike the other technique is every way. Sitting and pulling the individual threads out one, by one, by one, until I am left with a pile of thread, raw and undone, ready to be transformed into something new.
I began twisting and coiling, almost absentmindedly at first, as if in a state of thought, letting the fabric wrap around itself again and again, forming spirals, loops, and layers around my finger. My fingers found a rhythm in the motion, a quiet repetition that slowed my thoughts and centred me in the moment. As I wrapped the threads around my finger, as I pulled it off, I half expected it to fall apart again, back into their individual spaces. But they held their form, no securing with glue, just standing, a new form created, a new life breathed and a new limit broken.
What started as a simple act of twisting became a way to transform flat, pliable pieces of fabric into something with presence and weight. Each coil holds tension and release, a balance between control and surrender. The fabric curls back on itself, retaining its softness even as it gains structure. I realised that in coiling, I was not constraining the fabric — I was giving it a new life, a new form that carried both its past and the intention of my hands. As the coils are laid next to each other and again, a composition emerging throughout
This technique became a new kind of language through which I could communicate with the material. Some fabrics resist, stubborn and firm; others yield, delicate and pliant. Through hours of coiling, I learned to respond, to guide without forcing, to let the texture emerge naturally. And allowing the colours to fade into each other, to keep and embrace the randomness, to dissolve myself into the process and enjoy the creative journey. The repetition of the process became grounding, almost therapeutic — a way to channel transforming fidgeting into something tangible and beautiful.
Some people ask me, “why don’t you just buy thread? It would save you time.” But for me, fabric coils are more than structure; they are a vessel for presence. They carry the story of every twist, every pull, every pause, embedding me into the work in the most intimate way. For me and the viewer to witness quiet dialogue between patience, transformation, and the material.
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