Augustine is one of those portraits of women that regularly appear in my work. 

She is the starting point for the creation of embroidered objects and photographs. Augustine was the famous patient of Professor Charcot at the Salpêtrière. His research and experiments in treating hysteria have resulted in a rich iconography. The photographs of Augustine showing her convulsions during hysteria reminded me of the haunting gestures of embroidery which sometimes lead to a kind of trance.

I embroidered print on paper and silkscreen on silk from took from the photographic archives of the Salpêtrière Hospital.

I also created a toxic lead embroidered collar in reference to the collar she often wears in photographs from the Salpêtrière archives.

The last  object I made for Augustine comes from the memory of the "electric tongue battery game":  as a child, when you place the strips of the battery under your tongue, you can feel a slight shock. 

(Sehnsucht in German is a kind of nostalgia tinged with desire)

Augustine Ornementale (Hysteria Set)

D-Ring Muse Project  is a series of embroidered  collages using lurex and cotton threads, glass beads and rose thorns (29,7cm x 42 cm) 2020-2021

I also have turned 2 of my embroidered collages into giant embroidery charts for cross-stitching (200cmx150cm) They are then printed on construction site tarpaulins to be installed outside.

Embroidery is an activity of intranquillity, an immobile journey agitated by the rhythm of the repetitive gesture. I embroider everywhere, in parks, in the subways, in waiting areas. My embroidery absorbs my environment at the same time as it projects itself outwards. This posture in the urban space is at the origin of the collages and the large cross-stitch grids of the D-Ring Muses series.

I started this work during the first lockdown in March 2020. At that time of general closure, the only activity allowed was walking. Walking in a city that suddenly offered no diversion, a city deserted by human activity, that revealed wounds, flaws, incompleteness. Graffiti, torn posters, outdated advertisements, abandoned scaffolding gained in visual intensity. I created embroidered collages and then cross-stitched tarpaulins from this visual wandering. It reflects the uncertainty, an unusual anguish, that apocalyptic something that oozed from the Berlin walls

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