Using a sewing machine, fabric and paint on raw canvas, and inspired by aerial view landscape drawings and maps, I invent 'plots' that are neither true abstractions, nor complete landscapes but navigate between interpretative poles. With a limited palette and through an improvisational approach, these works are large in scale and hint to an unfamiliar impossible space, a space that allows viewers to detach and contemplate their relationship to the external world. I seek to connect the dichotomy of the cold, analytical masculine subject with the appropriation of traditional feminine materials, adopting a sewing machine as a mechanically precise drawing tool.
The 4 recent works from 2018, are taken from my memory of visiting these particular places in Aleppo and Damascus in 2006 combined with imagining what they would look like today, after the destruction.
In the series of stitched works from 2011-2012, I was researching the evolution of urban landscapes and how it ties to memory, focusing on New York City’s topographical evolution. I’m interested in exploring how we define ourselves in relation to the built environment around us where buildings in the urban context interact with one another and allow individuals to create a narrative of who they are-past, present, and future. Our memory and identity are forever changed after buildings and monuments are destroyed through war, natural destruction, and urban planning. The subsequent rebuilding both “as it once was” as well as a complete modern reconstruction ultimately suppresses memory seemingly creating a sense of utopia. I use Google Earth and archival images to collect my data and use this information as a starting point to create this invented series of urban renewal projects. The works are done through improvisation pointing to a heterotopic, neither here nor there vision of New York; an unreality based on a utopian inspired ideal.