Boundless Stitches

This body of work investigates how memory accumulates in the body through force rather than narrative. Rather than treating memory as something recalled or represented, these works approach it as a material condition, one that builds density, resistance, and pressure over time.

The photographic image functions here as an initial structure, not a fixed origin. Once transferred onto fabric, the image becomes vulnerable to interruption. Thread is applied through repeated, directional movements that compress certain zones while leaving others exposed. This uneven distribution mirrors psychological processes in which memory does not surface evenly but gathers around charged points, areas of fixation, avoidance, or excess.

Stitching operates as a mechanical action rather than a decorative one. The machine’s speed, repetition, and insistence introduce a non-reflective force into the work, echoing psychoanalytic understandings of memory as something that acts upon the subject rather than being consciously controlled. The body, in this sense, is not the author of memory but its surface, marked by accumulation, abrasion, and constraint.

The density of thread produces visual weight that interferes with legibility. Faces are partially buried, bound, or held in suspension. This resistance to clarity challenges the photographic promise of visibility and instead proposes opacity as a valid psychological and political condition. The female body is not offered for consumption but is structurally withheld, protected by excess material.

Color appears as an intensity rather than a symbol. Black registers saturation and compression; red signals a moment of rupture within the field; blue opens a brief interval of suspension. These moments are not expressive gestures but material shifts that reorganize how the surface carries tension.

Importantly, sewing is treated here as inherited technique stripped of nostalgia. While rooted in a lineage of domestic labor, the act is displaced from care toward endurance. The fabric does not soften the image, it absorbs impact. Through accumulation rather than resolution, the works insist that memory is not something to be healed or clarified, but something the body continues to hold.