YiMiao
Shih
Artist Statement: on 'Embroidery-Drawing'
During the past five years, my core practice has been about the investigation in expanded drawing with the medium of threads and fabric. I converse my thoughts and findings of what is drawing and what consists of the nature of drawings with stitching lines. The way each stitched line is introduced onto the fabric serves a purpose, and is manipulated by me in order to narrate some form of mark making nature. I defined my work as ‘embroidery-drawing’, of which the logic and key concept is fundamentally the debate of ‘what is drawing’. These ‘embroidery-drawing’ I created in the past years have been focused on image-making and narrative building, which is constructed by the composition, juxtaposition between the real world and my imagination.
The ‘embroidery-drawing’ narrates the strength of line-drawing. In practice, I produce a mix of short and long stitches to articulate the energy and gesture which reflect the hand-drawn movement. From a distance, the ‘embroidery-drawing’ seems like a painted image, but it is composed with ‘threaded-drawn lines’. A false drawing appearance is another speculation I like to tease with these carefully created lines. The relationship can be seen between the paper and embroidery work in the Landscape Study series: The work on paper dissects the movement and elements of stitching lines, and the ‘embroidery-drawing’ examines the movement of line marks, differentiating itself from traditional textile. The work on paper in my practice manifests imagination and inquiry for my ‘embroidery-drawing’ work, also for building surreal narratives that are composed between reality and my pseudo self taking the form as a fictional character.