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.
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