Contemporary Embroidery

Statement:

' In this collection I am looking at how people’s values have changed over the years by making a comparison between what they were praising and cherishing in the past and what they consider important now. Taking inspiration from my own cultural background, I started by analysing Romanian embroidery, which plays the most important role in our folklore in terms of clothes. I am fascinated by how much meaning there is behind it, and how nothing is random; each symbol is very powerful and it is there for a reason.

Nowadays, people do not cherish nature that much, but what they carry with them all day long is their smart phones. Thus, we couldn’t live without Internet and Wi-Fi, because we couldn’t post pictures on Facebook and Instagram and show our stories on Snapchat and then check regularly to see how many views we have. We couldn’t go anywhere without GPS and tracking apps. With that in mind I redesigned the traditional Romanian embroidery and I replaced the meaningful symbols of nature with more contemporary ones: the logos of social media apps, Wi-Fi, phones and so on in order to make a point about today’s society. I then used it in embroidering pieces of wood by using a pyrography pen.'