Having worked at the top of the fashion industry for over 15 years, the artist brings with her an identity and sensibility that is deeply rooted in a passion for textiles. In her artistic practice she literally unpicks the fabrics, repurposes them, and assigns them meanings that transcend their initial, aesthetically pleasing appearance. She often incorporates text to imbue the works with an added layer of symbolism and allegory. The artist has always been a collector of highly sophisticated textiles that have history and are rare to find, and often made less and less due to the diminishing number of craftspeople who have learnt how to produce them. By giving prominence to the fabrics, she celebrates this history of making, while exploring their potential as ‘more than just fabrics’ in the present day.

Vintage textiles that she incorporates in her work include moiré, crochet, velvets, rough silks, macramé and brocade. All of which are extremely complicated and time-intensive to weave, and have also formed the visual foreground of some of the most important paintings in the Western canon. One can think of Ingres, etc etc etc. In the masterpieces by these artists as they present the weight, sheen, detail and pure richness of fabrics creates an identity for the textile in and of itself, while also lending stature and symbolism to the sitters who pose in the garments, and lending further grandeur to the interiors that they inhabit.  

The artist allows her works to speak with the viewer, following in the principle of art as means of communication; sometimes even art as a manifesto or call to arms. She gives a voice to artisanal techniques, while subverting the techniques by using them to convey unexpected words or phrases that seem at odds with what we are looking at. Indeed, the tension between sacred and profane is a tangible theme in the work.

By repurposing and reimagining the potential of her chosen textiles, and intervening with her words, unique works of art come to the forefront of her creative output. These are at once unique and timeless, with their reverence for the history that they reference, as well as the deceptively concise messaging. Indeed, she foregrounds the power of words, sometimes ambiguous, other times not; often opting for words that have multiple meanings, for example Prego. There is an astonishing subtlety to these works, one might not register the words/ the message unless one looks into the fabric for long enough. The words emerge, and you read through the fabric. This is achieved by using tonal or monochromes palettes. So gilded words will appear on a golden brocade, transparent beads on a white taffeta silk, watery glass beads on a green moiré. The words have specific biographical meanings to the artist from experiences from her early life until now, however there is universality in the messaging that creates an experience that is at once personal and shared with the viewer.

Another important dimension in the work is humour, this takes the form of a dark, dry wit that comes across as by turns ironic and surreal. The tangible support system of this can be mapped in the adoption of a ‘bling’ language that centres around sparkling, delicate beads adorning fabrics that shimmer while they capture light and movement across their intricate surfaces. The ‘bling’ overture, and reference to an aesthetic traditionally associated with heightened feminine beauty or beatification, is at odds with the plain, humble words (Per grazie riceuvta) or crude profanities (Cazzo Gaurda). This creates a high-low contrast that is at once ingrained in pop-culture, as well as a critique on the way that materials, objects, and words themselves are valued, or not valued.  

 Since she began to spend significant periods of time in Venice in 2020, she has incorporated influences from the city, from the Madonnas of Bellini paintings in the Gallerie del Accademia, to the vintage Murano beads from the 1940s bought in local markets that she uses in the embroideries. The works however are in a constant globalised dialogue – they are crafted by female artisans in Casablanca and are essentially bi-lingual, communicating messages in English or Italian. The texts become like mantras, elevating the artisanal work with the infused urgency of their messaging.symbolism.