Thursday, August 3, 2023

Using Red Thread, Rima Day Intertwines History, Nature, and Human Experience in Striking Embroideries

a vintage cyanotype of a Japanese woman with red embroidered details on top

All images © Rima Day, shared with permission

Pondering the beguiling aspects of human experience, artist Rima Day (previously) embroiders a labyrinth of undulating root systems and sinuous veins. The Tennessee-based artist entwines fleeting sentiments of humanity with bodies and nature, using a range of surfaces that converse with red thread. “I imagine that the needle for me is like a writer’s pen. The shape represents the transience and vitality of the human mind and body, but at the same time, I suggest the similarity to trees and other aspects in nature,” she tells Colossal.

Cascading across a cyanotype, surging from the center of a delicate corset, or proliferating from the gutter of an open book, each of Day’s fiber iterations call to the notion of connection. “I felt like if I could see love, this is how it should look like,” she says. “Just like tree roots or blood vessels, my thread matrix split into thinner appendages as if to absorb or distribute nutrition. It translated into human passion and desire in my mind.” Although these threads formally mimic capillary connections and circulatory systems, they simultaneously ponder the microcosmic relationship between emotions and the entangled pathways that frame our world and bodies.

With a background in fashion design and garment construction, Day is also inspired by 17th to 19th-century sartorial history. Considering feminine garments worn during this time period, the artist contemplates emotions that women may have felt while they wore complicated and restrictive attire. Portraying passion through the color red and using clothing as her canvas, she reflects on how women often had to conceal their true desires, hopes, and liveliness under the constrictions of social standards that dictated their clothing.

Day will be participating in Museum of Contemporary Art Nashville’s pop up exhibition TMP2: Up in Arms this August. You can buy her stitched cyanotype prints on Etsy, and view more artwork on Instagram and her website

 

a delicate white corset with red embroidered details

a book made of diaphanous white fabric with sinuous red embroidery

two delicate white gloves with red embroidered details

a delicate white kimono with red embroidered details

a book made of diaphanous white fabric with sinuous red embroidery

the shell of an old violin with red embroidered details

a book made of diaphanous white fabric with sinuous red embroidery

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Using Red Thread, Rima Day Intertwines History, Nature, and Human Experience in Striking Embroideries appeared first on Colossal.



from Colossal https://ift.tt/Vwoq1h3
via IFTTT

No comments:

Post a Comment

A Knotted Octopus Carved Directly into Two Pianos Entwines Maskull Lasserre’s New Musical Sculpture

“The Third Octave” (2023). All images © Maskull Lasserre, shared with permission Behind the hammers and pins of most upright pianos is a ...