In her ‘Sleep Series’, Maryam Ashkanian highlights a bit of the human behind the mystery, with embroidered pillows containing expressive thread sketches of various people in various sleeping positions. They are delicate - both the pillow and how the stitched figures are positioned on them. Their intricate nature betrays the fragility of sleep and the wonder of the process.

Defined as a ‘fibre’ artist, the Iranian operates out of her studio there. Coming from a country so rich in tapestry, where handcrafted goods are the norm, not the exception, means that her creations transcend being solely works of art, but objects that have a second-life as things of great craftsmanship. 

Inspired by the human, Ashkanian’s fibre art deals not only with the raw beauty and human awe of sleep, but in more abstract concepts too, such as her ‘Mutation Series’, where the stitching is thicker, less subtle and concerned with life on a very biological level.

These larger pieces would look as comfortable in a science museum as an art gallery, where their intimately sewn details have a striking familiarity with the jarring relationship between beauty and horror in nature, of the relentless will to create life - no matter where it is or what it’s on. 

Ashkanian shows us how true that is with her own process. On a pillow, with thread, she’s able to weave life into an inanimate object. Not just life, but intimate portraits of people we don’t even know, yet can relate to, in their midnight movements as dreams, recovery, growth and rest all jostle around in their minds - untraversed planes, like the medium of sewing as art itself, being explored.