Portrait after loss (unpicked handkerchiefs 2020-2025), installation.

“Portrait after loss” explores loss, resilience and growth through the language of unpicked threads. It consists of a floor-based installation using threads from unwoven handkerchiefs to form a web around a central hole. A series of cyanotypes show the unpicking process through accumulated threads. Stemming from personal experience of grief, the work recognises our capacity to accept change and grow around absence.

As the handkerchiefs are unpicked they lose their form and function and are reduced to a pile of threads. Free from the constraints of woven cloth, they are transformed into a delicate web, supporting one another loosely. Suggestive of a more organic state, the web speaks of fragility and strength, presence and absence, loss and transformation. 

This piece forms part of a wider practice in which I use unpicking to consider processes of collapse and regeneration. As global collapse grows ever closer, this work reflects a need to unravel constructed narratives, and find threads that connect us to a more authentic set of values. Threads that reveal our interconnection with natural rhythms, offering a less rigid, more fluid state, adaptable to change. Through pulling things apart we find that which is indestructible; threads of resilience.