Textiles
2025
Y ahora mi cabeza se ha convertido en un jardín
Private collection commissioned by writer Patricia Emsens
Embroidery on cotton, wooden frame, 51 × 43 cm, 2025
Embroidery on cotton, 24 × 11.4 cm, 2025
Color photograph, inkjet print on Hahnemühle fine art paper, framed 33 × 45.5 cm, 2025
The work Y ahora mi cabeza se ha convertido en un jardÃn — “Now my head has turned into a garden” * —, consisting of textile pieces and a photograph, is my response to writer Patricia Emsens's proposal to work on a piece of embroidered fabric she gave me, as well as to the dialogue that developed between us. The fabric had been cut from a Romanian blouse; its embroidered section corresponded to the front panel adorned with floral motifs.
Through transcriptions into drawings and embroidery (preliminary work before intervening on the fabric I received), the floral ornamentation of the front panel was transformed into a broader organic universe that includes both animals and humans. The new forms evoke the human spine and the lungs. Taking this resemblance into account, recalling the clothing, and invoking the image of Henry Matisse's 1935 work Le rêve, I compose the photograph that forms part of the project.
The textile work on the original fabric consists of two layers of fabric. These surfaces interact through light, their patterns interplaying with one another. In this work, I stitched the fabrics together, creating an abstract composition that partially and temporarily unites them, while respecting the integrity of the original embroidery.
* “Now my head has turned into a garden”: excerpt from a poem by Mardonio Carballo from the book The Song of the Flowers, translated from Nahuatl by Patrick Saurin.
