With today being Halloween we thought posting the strangely beautiful embroidered portraits
by Maurizio Anzeri apropos. The Italian-born, London-based artist uses found photographs and with sewing, embroidery and drawing gives them an eerie and unsettling aura. We didn’t find his website but we did find his biography on Saatchi Gallery and this artist statement on Escape Into Life:
“I work with sewing, embroidery and drawing to explore the essence of signs in their physical manifestation. I take inspiration from my own personal experience and observation of how, in other cultures, bodies themselves are treated as living graphic symbols. I then use sewing and embroidery in a further attempt to re-signify, and mark the space with a man-made sign, a trace. The intimate human action of embroidery is a ritual of making and reshaping stories and history of these people. I am interested in the relation between intimacy and the outer world.”
“I put tracing paper over the photo and draw on the face until it develops. ……When I begin the stitching something else happens, drawing will never do what thread will.â€
Images: Courtesy of Maurizio Anzeri.
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