Defense Mechanism

Defence Mechanism is a vivid wall-based series exploring the intersection of domesticity, craft, and quiet resistance.

Each piece features a cluster of brightly coloured glass-tipped pins mounted within painted embroidery hoops, their tiny points arranged in bright formations that feel at once decorative and defensive.

The series has grown during a summer spent largely on the sofa while I underwent chemotherapy treatment for a recurrence of uterine cancer. Embroidery became a way to keep making when the studio felt out of reach. The stitches are imperfect. Neuropathy has left my hands unreliable, and I have not embroidered since childhood, but the act of repetition and the rhythm of thread through fabric offered a small, steady form of focus.

The pins themselves remain alert, standing to attention in brilliant colour. Framed within their hoops, they read like shields, or perhaps wounds. Together they suggest a kind of domestic armour, where softness and sharpness coexist.

This growing collection celebrates the power of small acts of making: the sharp edge of the everyday, and the resilience found in repetition, colour, and craft. Installed together, the works hum with quiet energy, a wall of softness bristling with intent.